Also at The Albany Project
Today's New York Times contains the latest installment in the NYC media campaign to nominate and elect Helicopter Harold Ford of Tennessee, Merrill Lynch, the DLC, NBC, and the Park Avenue Regency as the junior Senator from New York, in place of the excellent Kirsten Gillibrand.
Ford got a freebie op-ed in the Times, to go along with the freebie op-eds he got in the Daily News and Post last week.
They are all glorified campaign lit, but the Times op-ed is more dishonest than the others, in that nowhere does it hint that Ford has been an all-but-declared candidate against Gillibrand since Jan. 6, when his campaign launched with the first of almost-daily puff pieces in the Times.
DINO details, below.
Ford repeats his advocacy of tax cuts for corporations and rich people, which again reflects his unique status as the candidate of Wall Street and a small clique of Manhattan multi-millionaires (including Mayor Bloomberg and the owners of the three dailies) and scant few other New Yorkers.
Ford also calls for well short of half a loaf of health care reform, along with the longtime Republican/insurance company priority of limiting malpractice suits, and an inconsequential immigration reform.
Last of all, in his "bold" four-point plan, is this:
We need to address budget deficits now rather than waiting for some ideal future economic situation. It’s a good sign that the Obama administration is following the advice of Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Evan Bayh of Indiana and other Democratic fiscal pragmatists who embrace the idea of a bipartisan commission to recommend spending cuts to rein in deficit growth. But we must be sure that the administration and Congress heed the commission’s advice.
In short, Ford supports conservative deficit hawks, most of them Republicans, who want to cut Social Security benefits for baby boomers by hook or crook.
Ford shows that he knows nothing about history, including part of the time he was in Congress representing Tennessee, or that he's a clever liar-by-omission, when he goes on at some length about how President Clinton reduced the deficit in the 1990s (somehow without a deficit commission).
Ford naturally, given his multi-millionaire/Wall Street base, does not mention that Clinton reduced the deficit he inherited by raising taxes on rich people (with no Republicans votes in the House and the Senate), and reducing defense spending in the aftermath of the Cold War.
The real problem with the deficit commission is that its primary proponent, Wall Street investment banker Pete Peterson, has made no secret that the ultimate goal is to reduce Social Security benefits for baby boomers.
Dean Baker's analysis of this awful idea is right on target (it's long, but well worth a read):
While the commission idea is bad enough by itself, it especially troubling that the proposal would place major cuts in Social Security on the table. This is troubling for two reasons. First, current and near retirees will badly need their Social Security after the Wall Street boys' machinations destroyed their home equity and retirement accounts. The vast majority of middle-income families will have very little other than Social Security to support them in retirement.
However, plans to cut Social Security are even more troubling because they amount to an effective default on a portion of the national debt. In 1983, Congress voted to raise the Social Security tax above the level needed to pay for current Social Security benefits. The intention was to deliberately accumulate a surplus, which would be invested in government bonds and held by the Social Security trust fund. The rationale was that the huge baby boomer cohort would begin retiring and collecting benefits in 2008. The trust fund could be used to partially cover the cost of their retirement.
This means that the baby boomers have effectively already paid for the cost of their own retirement. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bonds in the trust fund, together with ongoing tax revenue, will be sufficient to pay for all Social Security benefits through the year 2044.
snip
In this context, cutting benefits for the current or near retirees amounts to an effective default on the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund. These bonds were supposed to pay for the benefits of the baby boomers. If Congress doesn't pay these benefits, then it is effectively defaulting on the bonds held by the trust fund.
The deficit hawks, led by Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, have no qualms about defaulting on the government bonds held by the Social Security trust fund. In fact, they argue that there is no alternative. Peterson and his followers assume that it is acceptable to default on the government bonds that are supposed to pay for workers' Social Security because there will be no consequences to the economy if Congress votes to default.
But, this is a political assessment, not economic analysis. There will only be no economic consequences from defaulting on the bonds held by the trust fund if the public decides to let Congress default without consequence. However, there is no reason whatsoever why the public should allow Congress to default on the bonds dedicated to paying their Social Security at the same time that it honors in full the bonds held by Peter Peterson, Goldman Sachs, and the rest of the Wall Street crowd.
In other words, if the Peterson crew wants defaulting on the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund to be on the agenda, then defaulting on the bonds held by the Wall Street gang should also be on the agenda. Defaulting on the government debt will have serious consequences and certainly should not be done lightly. But if the Peterson Wall Street crew is putting default on the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund on the agenda, then the rest of us should insist that a partial default on other government bonds also be on the agenda.
After all, it was the greed of the Wall Street crew and the inept policy prescriptions of many of these deficit hawks that brought down the economy. They should not be allowed to take what little the rest of us have left while walking away unscathed themselves. If defaulting on the debt held by Social Security is on the agenda, then the commission better have a partial default on all government debt on its agenda. That is simple enough for even a Wall Street investment banker to understand.
As a baby boomer who's been paying higher Social Security taxes for most of my working life, and face a one-year-later full-benefit retirement age, thanks to the Greenspan Commission, I do not appreciate the bait-and-switch essence of the Peterson plan, which would be illegal in most commercial contexts.
I can't say I'm surprised that multi-millionaires like Harold Ford would advocate cutting Social Security, since that would be pocket change in their retirement incomes.
But I am somewhat surprised that Ford actually believes that his high-profile advocacy of cutting Social Security -- an overwhelmingly popular program, especially among Democrats -- will help him in a Democratic primary against Gillibrand.
P.S. Paul Krugman shreds Ford's op-ed on his blog, in a post headlined "No Ford in our future":
Wow. Harold Ford’s op-ed in today’s Times has to set some kind of new standard for cluelessness.
P.P.S. Atrios is also no fan of Ford's op-ed, or the Times for publishing it:
Harold Ford thinks we should cut taxes and cut the deficit and that the federal government should shrink in size and create jobs.
And that's how stupid you have to be to write an op-ed for our elite papers.
P.P.P.S. Digby's deficit commission snark is pretty good, too:
It's exactly what the Republicans would do, which is why the villagers are feeling tingles up their legs at the prospect.
It goes without saying that actually delivering anything of value to the country is now off the table but I'm sure that between a fierce concentration on budget balancing and sounding really annoyed at bankers, the voters will be perfectly satisfied, so that's good.