Fabian Behaviorist Orszag Pushes Fascist Austerity

April 23, 2009 (LPAC)—Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, trained at the British Fabians' main base at the London School of Economics, is Lawrence Summers' cohort in the drive for fascist austerity, to dismantle Social Security and medical care.

In addition to his calls for budget-cutting today, Orszag went on the offensive against the LaRouchePAC drive to save Social Security from Bush's Pinochet plan back in 2005, by penning a plan that called for "politically painful... benefit reductions."

Orszag went directly into the bowels of the Fabian Society after graduating from Princeton in 1991. Sponsored by the U.K. government (a "Marshall Scholar"), he received advanced degrees at the Fabians' London School of Economics (LSE). His first job was at the LSE-based U.K. government project, the Centre for Economic Performance. He studied how to govern Russia under the British Empire, in coordination with the Russia-looting operations of Larry Summers and George Soros operating from the USA. Orszag was deployed from England to Russia during 1993, as an adviser to the Russian Finance Ministry on their relations with the International Monetary Fund.

Orszag went to the U.S. for a year in the Council of Economic Advisers, then returned to England (1994-1995) for more training at the Fabian/UK government Center at LSE.

He joined the Clinton administration 1995-1998 as an economist, beginning his preoccupation with destroying the Social Security system set up by President Franklin Roosevelt.

During several years in private consulting, Orszag became a Brookings Institution austerity expert and played a dirty game as Director — and total saboteur — of the "Hamilton Project." Orszag tried to break the Democratic Party's resistance to the wrecking of Social Security.

He directed the Congressional Budget Office (Jan. 2007-Nov. 2008) during the disastrous Nancy Pelosi reign as House Speaker.

Peter Orszag collaborated with Peter Diamond on a 2005 article, "Saving Social Security: the Diamond-Orszag Plan." The behavioral economist pair asserted that the "Social Security deficit can be eliminated only through ... politically painful ... tax increases and benefit reductions." The article was widely noted as an enemy ploy in the bitter showdown with the Republicans over Social Security.

On Jan. 18, 2005, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Democrats should break out of their fixed defense of Social Security and compromise with President George W. Bush. Peter Orszag responded that Thomas is "opening up a much more auspicious conversation...." Working in tandem with Orszag and other Fabian Democrats, Rep. Thomas then demanded an end to attacks on Bush, and "a bill the President could sign."

Calling for cuts in health care and pensions in Sept. 28, 2006 testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, Orszag said ominously, that for the "painful adjustments ... the regular political process seems unlikely to produce a solution. Any specific proposal is apt to be immediately and sharply attacked." So, "the President [at that time, Bush] and the leaders of both parties ... need to come together in a special process."

On Oct. 19, 2006, Democratic Congressional aides reported to the LaRouche Political Action Committee that members of Congress involved in a "revolt from below against globalization," were angry about what they called "the Hamilton Project Strategy" attributed to the Project's director Peter Orszag: a strategy claiming that globalization would steadily decrease unemployment and improve the economy. The aides strongly contrasted the LaRouche/FDR-model "Old Democrats" with Orszag's free-trade "New Democrats."

Peter Orszag testified Feb. 23, 2007 at the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, calling for "wage insurance," a Fabian Society proposal Orszag had been promoting at the Hamilton Project. The scheme was for government-subsidized lower wages for workers displaced from real jobs by the inevitably expanding globalization. This would also involve the end of disability insurance and workmen's compensation programs.

The Orszag scheme was explained with an aristocratic smirk in an article (in policy-network.net) written for the Fabian Society by Roger Liddle, a Tony Blair adviser employed by the London School of Economics:

"One new idea that might work in the UK is wage insurance: a temporary top up for unemployed people who accept jobs at lower wages than they previously enjoyed on the basis that learning on the job will improve their value to the employer and their earning potential."

Peter Orszag is now the austerity point-man as Director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget. Jeffrey Zients has just been appointed deputy to Orszag, tasked, in particular, with cutting health care. Titled "Chief Performance Officer," Zients is to assist in fulfilling the mission Orszag took up at Britain's Center for Economic Performance.