Double-Speak on the Debt Crisis

by Clyde Weiss  |  February 27, 2013

Cutting the debt gets a lot of attention as a big agenda item of the far right. Now we learn that some of those who push to cut public spending, including funding of critical social programs like Medicare and Medicaid, are also some of the same people benefiting most from government spending.

A group called Fix the Debt, which advocates slashing the deficit by cutting such social safety net programs as Social Security and Medicare, includes “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,” according to The New York Times.

Fix the Debt, armed with a reported $43 million corporate-donor war chest, recently began a national advertising campaign urging President Obama and members of Congress to revise the tax code and also reduce long-term spending on social programs, The Times reported.

This comes after the group failed to win any of their three major objectives in the compromise “fiscal cliff” bill that Congress passed on New Year’s Day: cutting Social Security and Medicare spending, cutting corporate tax rates and shifting to a system that would grant a permanent corporate tax holiday on offshore income.

The real motive of this group is laid bare by The Times article. For instance, it highlights that a key member of Fix the Debt, former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, “received more than $300,000 in compensation in 2011 as a board member of General Electric. The company is among the most aggressive in the country at minimizing its tax obligations.”

Another Fix the Debt leader, former Louisiana congressman Jim McCrery, is also a lobbyist whose “clients have included the Alliance for Savings and Investment, a group of large companies pushing to maintain low tax rates on dividend income, and the Win America Campaign, a coalition of multinational corporations that lobbied for a one-time “repatriation holiday” allowing them to move offshore profits back home without paying taxes.

Ironically, some Fix the Debt leaders represent companies that paid no net federal income tax from 2008 through 2010, including Boeing, Corning, General Electric, Honeywell and Verizon Communications. Helping to reduce the national debt by paying their fair share is obviously not on their agenda.

Fix the Debt’s “official” mission was to urge “Washington to agree to comprehensive debt reform that avoids the fiscal cliff and puts the long-term U.S. debt load on a gradual path of reduction.” Now we know its real motive is not to fix the debt unless it also protects the tax loopholes that benefit its members, even if it comes out of the hides of those who can least afford it. Learn more about the hypocrisy of Fix the Debt here.