Petersen Foundation Set to Launch Entitlement Offensive

Speaking of conservative talking points aimed at scaring youth about future debt, MSNBC's First Read is reporting that the Peter Petersen Foundation is set to launch a $1 million ad blitz about the need for entitlement reform:

As the Senate debates an economic stimulus plan whose price tag could come close to $900 billion, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation -- a non-partisan group created to bring awareness to the nation's rising spending and entitlement costs -- is launching an ad campaign [pdf] to urge the Obama White House and Congress to address long-term fiscal challenges.

That campaign began today with a print advertisement in the Washington Post and Roll Call. "Today's economic crisis is just the tip of the iceberg," the ad says, with the picture of a gigantic iceberg. "We must also focus on a much larger yet less visible threat: the $56 trillion in liabilities and unfunded retirement and health care obligations (that’s $483,000 per U.S. household), and the dangerous reliance on foreign lenders, that threaten our ship of state."

Tomorrow, Peterson Foundation president Dave Walker -- along with Sens. Kent Conrad (D) and George Voinovich (R), and Reps. Frank Wolf (R) and Jim Cooper (D) -- will hold a press conference to announce the group's full plans for a $1 million-plus advertising campaign.

Petersen has long been an opponent of entitlements and a promoter of generational warfare narratives. Most recently, his foundation was behind the production and distribution of IOUSA, a scare-tastic look at America's debt and entitlement programs that was thoroughly debunked as one-sided and misleading by the Center for Economic Policy Research.

Entitlement reform and debt will be the wedge issues that Republicans try to use to divide the Millennial Generation and the Democratic Party. This new ad blitz by the Petersen Foundation is probably laying the groundwork for those arguments.