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" No reason in the world not to like Bill Clinton generally these days. He&amp;#039;s slipped comfortably into the role of elder statesman. He put the Democratic ticket into hyperdrive at the convention last year. He knows more \u2014 and is interested in knowing more \u2014 about more stuff than any 200 other people you will meet. So why, in the name of god, is he still stuck in 1993 about the deficit? You remember 1993, when he had all those big plans about a stimulus program, and then Bob Rubin and a bunch of expensive Wall Street suits talked him down of that very low progressive ledge, and he complained that &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re all Rockefeller Repulbicans now,&amp;quot; and then told the nation that the era of big government is over? Why is he still hanging out with the dingy likes of Pete Peterson? Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, has been the leading opponent of deficit hysteria and austerity, while Peterson has spent some $500 million since 2007 encouraging deficit reduction. Clinton, interviewed on a keynote panel by MSNBC&amp;#039;s Tamron Hall, began by saying he wanted to address &amp;quot;one factual dispute.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I think everybody in this debate has an obligation to say what they believe,&amp;quot; said Clinton. &amp;quot;I think Paul Krugman&amp;#039;s right in the short run, and Pete Peterson and Simpson-Bowles and all those guys, everybody&amp;#039;s right in the long run. And the question is timing.&amp;quot; This would be a reasoned position if Pete Peterson hadn&amp;#039;t been licking his lips lubriciously at the thought of getting the Social Security trust fund into the hands of his plutocrat buddies through every possible economic moment for the past 25 years. Boom or bust, expansion or recession, Pete wants to &amp;quot;reform&amp;quot; entitlements by reforming them from your money into his. However, it seems that the dire consequences in Europe of the movement to which he has dedicated his entire public life has made ol&amp;#039; Pete a little gun-shy. In another sign that austerity politics seem to be falling out of fashion, Peterson and his son attempted to walk away from the label. &amp;quot;The austerity movement thing gets conflated into anything that involves dealing with the budget. But that is just false if you are talking about some reform that doesn&amp;#039;t kick in for 10 years but has no impact immediately,&amp;quot; Michael Peterson told Politico&amp;#039;s Morning Money in advance of the summit.  Bull. Also, shit. If you commit to &amp;quot;reforming,&amp;quot; say, Social Security along the lines that Pete Peterson has been proposing for almost three decades, even if the &amp;quot;reforms&amp;quot; don&amp;#039;t go into effect for 10 years, the cultural, social, and political effect on that program will be immediate. It will immediately be converted in the public mind from what it is now to what the Petersons want it to be. It will then be possible, politically, to begin the pillaging before the reforms take place. The old man is crawfishing, too. Speaking before Clinton, Pete Peterson noted that &amp;quot;recently I&amp;#039;ve been called a deficit scold. Well, that may be half right.&amp;quot; Peterson allowed that he is, instead, &amp;quot;a long-term debt scold,&amp;quot; a problem he warned is a &amp;quot;primary, indeed a transcendent threat to our country&amp;#039;s future.&amp;quot;  He may not get there with you, boys, but he knows that you, as the primary owners of the country, will get to the promised land. This is a long fight hat has nothing to do with economics, and it never has. It is about control and the what some people believe is the proper role of government, and Pete Peterson always has just been the wallet for it. For the life of me, I don&amp;#039;t see why Bill Clinton still lends his name to this scam. He should stop being scared by Bob Rubin. It is the most unfathomable thing about Clinton to which the name &amp;quot;Monica Lewinsky&amp;quot; is not forever attached. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22532/bill-clinton-deficit-050713/>