Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) are giving their endorsement to a new ad campaign called “OweNo,” seeking to expand public awareness about the national debt — and signaling an opening volley in the Social Security debate, the Huffington Post reports,
OweNo? Hasn’t she ruined everything she touches?
The ad campaign is being run by the Peter G. Peterson foundation, created by the former Nixon-era Secretary of Commerce and co-founder of the budget hawk group the Concord Coalition. The first ad –Â part of a $20 million campaign — does not feature Bayh or Conrad, but a fictional politician named “Hugh Jidette,” and his crowd of supporters who stop cheering once he describes his policies of spending more money and passing the tab on to their kids.
“I’m Hugh Jidette, and I’m running for President! If elected, I promise our $13 trillion will double — and maybe even triple. I’ll continue to ignore our spiraling debt. And your kids can deal with it later. I’m Hugh Jidette, and I say, borrow like there’s no tomorrow!
Rally – HD from Peterson Foundation on Vimeo.
“People on the left who don’t want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic,” Conrad said at the ad launch. “I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality. On the right, those who say no new revenue, I believe, are also in denial.”
“The election a week ago today would have been a lot more edifying if we had more commercials like that then the ones running out there in the various states,” Bayh said of the ad. “Very impressive.”
