Dave Walker's Remarks at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation Launch
JULY 10, 2008
NEW YORK CITY
BY: Hon. David M. Walker
Pete, thanks for that very kind introduction. It's an honor to be your partner. Your life is an example of the American dream come true. In addition, you are one of but a few wealthy individuals who decided to give away a significant portion of your accumulated wealth to help create a better future for all of us. Thank you for doing so.
It's also a pleasure to be here at the Council on Foreign Relations, in this beautiful room and with all of you. By the way Pete, the former Chairman of the Council for 22 years in that painting hanging on the wall looks a lot like you!
Many people have asked me why I left my position as Comptroller General of the United States to start a new Foundation. In addition to having the opportunity to partner with Pete and helping him prudently spend a rather large sum of money, I became convinced that I needed to be able to do three things that I couldn't do as Comptroller General in order to successfully address our nation's key deficits. First, to advocate specific solutions to selected policy challenges. Second, to build strong and overt coalitions for real progress. Finally, to stimulate grassroots efforts designed to bring pressure on elected officials to act, and to hold them accountable if they don't.
After all, the current "status quo" or "do-nothing plan" is not good for the future of America or for American families. As a result, we plan to take all three of these actions and more at the Peterson Foundation.
The creation of this Foundation comes at a critical crossroads for our country - a time when tough choices are required by elected officials. Therefore, the Foundation will initiate several issue campaigns designed to stimulate action by policymakers before we face a crisis. In doing so, we will place special attention on activities geared towards younger Americans, the business and professional community, and both traditional and new media outlets.
In order to maximize our reach we'll make extensive use of the Internet, including social networking websites and YouTube, as well as various forms of popular media, including movies and cable television outlets like MTV. We will pursue advertising in appropriate circumstances - remember the Harry and Louise ads? In addition, we will consider infomercials in appropriate circumstances. After all, they worked pretty well for Ross Perot's message!
Importantly, the Foundation will operate in a strictly non-partisan and non-ideological manner in order to help achieve bipartisan action. In doing so, we won't be focused on yesterday or today. we'll be focused on the future, and on doing what it takes to help create a better tomorrow for all Americans.
As you can imagine, all of us at the Foundation have been very busy over the past three-plus months. I am, however, pleased to say that we have accomplished quite a bit in a relatively short period of time with a very small staff.
You have just gotten a glimpse of one of our accomplishments, namely the acquisition of I.O.U.S.A. I hope that all of you enjoyed the trailer enough to want to see the entire film. In another example of how we'll be innovative in using the media, our documentary will be the subject of an unprecedented town hall broadcast to 400 movie theaters nationwide on August 21. Stay tuned for more details on that! It will be released in at least 12 cities later in August, including New York, and as announced earlier today, it also will be screened at both presidential conventions. The film includes a number of prominent individuals, including some fellow New Yorkers like Bob Rubin and Paul Volcker. In many ways, the film is an Economic Inconvenient Truth; we just have humans in our film rather than polar bears and penguins. Hopefully, Americans will care about the future for humans too!
In addition to a theatrical release, we have an agreement in principle to have the film shown on television in January 2009. We also plan to distribute it to various educational institutions and post it to YouTube over time.
Beyond our I.O.U.S.A.-related efforts, we've issued our first formal publication. It's entitled "The State of the Union's Finance." By the way, the young people refer to this guide as "How Screwed R U". This citizen's guide incorporates a number of attractive looking graphics, but they paint an ugly picture of our nation's fiscal future, including some things that the government and various interest groups would rather that you not know. I would encourage all of you to read it. It can be found on our web site at www.pgpf.org.
We've also launched a new website which more than meets today's online standards, and we plan to continue to update it to take advantage of new technologies. Our site now includes a number of video and other presentation materials, a citizen action section, as well as an embedded blog. We've already signed up tens of thousands of supporters in just a few weeks, and we are shooting for at least 1,000,000 within two to three years. A billion dollars and a million people - that has a nice ring to it! Please sign up and encourage others to do so.
Within two weeks of the website being up, members of Congress and editorial boards had already heard from our supporters, courtesy of the sample letters available on our site. And we've just begun to fight.
Any organization is only as good as the people who comprise and support it, and so we've started to assemble a first rate team of officers, employees and contractors. All of our employees and several of our other key contractors are here tonight. Thanks to all of you who and comprise the Foundation's "total force." We really appreciate what you do in support of our mission.
Before I close, I want to mention our initial grants. Time doesn't allow me to say much. In summary, in addition to purchasing I.O.U.S.A., and engaging in a number of other operating activities, the Board has already approved over $5 million in grants, and we have a number in the pipeline. Our initial grants included a large one to The Concord Coalition for Phase II of the Fiscal Wake-up Tour. Phase II will be solutions-focused, and will involve about 24 cities and at least five regional Citizen Stewardship Committees. We gave a large grant to the Committee for Economic Development, who will partner with us in an effort to educate and activate the business community on our top issues. We gave another large grant to America's Promise, which Colin Powell founded, in order to reduce the high school drop-out rate and improve financial literacy among the high school population. We gave a grant to the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, who will partner with America's Promise in addressing the financial literacy challenge.
We also gave a grant to the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) who will partner with PetLabs at the New School to create a "Big Game" dealing with our fiscal future. We gave a grant to Public Agenda, who will partner with NAPA and others to help finance a classroom fiscal engagement exercise in hundreds of colleges and universities over the next two years. We gave a grant to Be the Change to support their groundbreaking campaign to inspire the next President and Congress to enact new legislation to increase national service opportunities and strengthen civic culture. Finally, we gave a grant to the State of the USA to help develop an approach to bring current and reliable public finance and health care outcome-based statistics to all Americans via the Internet.
Several heads and representatives of these organizations are here this evening, including Bob Bixby, Chuck Kolb, Alma Powell, Jenna Dorn and Chris Hoenig. We met with them this afternoon to help coordinate all of our related efforts, including activities between themselves. We look forward to partnering for progress with each of them and others in the future.
In closing, I hope that you will join us in helping to avoid a "Super Sub-prime crisis" in America, and to help make sure that our collective future is better than our past. Thank you for coming this evening, and thanks to everyone who has helped to make this evening a success, especially Elizabeth Wilner and our partners at Rubenstein Associates. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.
