Yves Smith set off a firestorm in her criticism of several progressive groups that have joined forces with Pete Peterson to whip up deficit hysteria. There are three issues that need to be addressed.

In a recent post, Jon Walker took aim at the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network’ s Budget for the Millennial America. Zachary Kolodin responds, clarifying the purpose, process and policies behind the plan.

The center-right nature of their plan helps move the Overton window of the debate on both health care and the deficit dramatically to the right. By choosing groups that would exclude the most obvious health care cost-cutting option available, the one that has proven an unqualified success at efficiently delivering health care coverage to the industrialized world, Peterson never risked accidentally proving that the progressive goal of “Medicare for all” also just happens to be the best deficit reduction plan available. And of course by submitting any plan at all, these organizations allow Peterson to pretend “even liberals” embrace the decidedly non-Keyesian notion that now is the right time to worry about long-term deficits.

Overall, it appears Peterson spent his money well.

A blog post published last week on Naked Capitalism raises an interesting question – what exactly is the Roosevelt legacy? For us at the Roosevelt Institute, we believe it is based in engaging in dialogue and promoting progressive people and ideas. It is also about encouraging young people to get involved in public service and public policy debates.

On an international level I would go so far as to say these three liberal health care plans are all significantly to the right of basically even center-right party in the rest of the industrialized world on health care. “Tort reform” gets more play than single payer. If these constitute the “left flank” of the political discussion around the pressing issue of health care costs in America, we as a country are screwed.

I’m surprised that my post, “Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name” has created a bit of a firestorm within what passes for the left wing political blogosphere. It has elicited responses from Andy Rich of the Roosevelt Institute, Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal, as well as two groups only mentioned in passing in the piece, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Why, after spending considerable resources, such as a website called New Deal 2.0, with virtually daily posts by Roosevelt fellows debunking deficit terrorism, and more formal work, such as a well-researched and argued paper by Tom Ferguson and Rob Johnson debunking deficit cutting in general and assaults on entitlements in particular, has the Roosevelt Institute cast its lot with a sworn enemy? Make no mistake, not only did the Institute undermine its raison d’etre by attaching its name to the Peterson anti-entitlements campaign, but as we’ll discuss later, the end product, as would be expected, bolstered particular initiatives that are contrary to FDR’s legacy, the Institute’s more general “progressive” objectives, and sound economics.