What do you do when the vast majority of Americans, of all ages and political stripes, disagree with you?  If you’re part of the well-financed anti-Social Security, Medicare lobby, you simply spend a portion of your billion dollar investment on a massive nationwide advertising campaign designed to convince Americans that cutting middle-class benefits is as American as…let’s see…McDonald’s hamburgers.  

    Burson-Marsteller subsidiary Proof Integrated Communications has launched a massive campaign for the Fix the Debt organization. The campaign includes images that are parody recreations of well-known advertising slogans with taglines like “I’m fixin’ it,” “Got debt?” and “Just fix it.” Johanna Schneider, MD of Burson’s DC office, said this is the biggest public policy campaign she has seen in some time.

This new campaign is in addition to the PR blitz already underway led by PR agencies DCI Group, Glover Park Group, and Dewey Square Group, which is also paid for by the same Pete Peterson funded anti-entitlement campaign.  

How ironic that as Alan Simpson continues to attack seniors’ groups like ours for daring to represent their membership (and at $12 per year membership you can be sure we don’t have a billion dollars to spend) his big business and Wall Street funded “Fix the Debt” campaign is preparing an all-out advertising onslaught geared to buy the debate and silence the middle-class Americans who will actually pay the price for their failed fiscal policies. Representing seniors — BAD, representing big business — No problem!

The American people simply don’t believe cutting Social Security benefits for a senior living on an average $14,000 while lowering tax rates for corporations and the wealthy is fiscally responsible.  They don’t believe the nation’s disabled, veterans, survivors and their families should pay the price for a deficit Social Security didn’t create. 

However, as we’ve already seen,  this Wall Street backed propaganda campaign has succeeded  in  convincing many on Capitol Hill that if millionaires lose even a penny of their tax cuts then the middle-class and poor must pay an even bigger price.   

The question is will this massive ad blitz fool the American people into accepting massive benefit cuts with their fries?