Voodoo economics doesn't die, it just gets picked up by new GOP candidates
It's not exactly a shocking revelation that John McCain's budget numbers
don't
add up. Presidential candidates' numbers are often rather pie-in-the-sky,
and political observers have been conditioned to give campaigns at least a
little leeway and wiggle room.
But from time to time, it's worth keeping in mind that McCain's budget
promises aren't just wrong, they're spectacularly ridiculous.
McCain recently told NPR, for example, "I can eliminate $100 billion of
wasteful and earmark spending immediately - $35 billion in big spending
bills in the last two years, and another $65 billion that has already been
made a permanent part of the budget." He told George Stephanopoulos almost
the exact same thing: "You do away with those, there's $100 billion right
before you look at any agency."
This magical savings, McCain has said, allows him to make promises about
eliminating the deficit altogether in four years, and making Bush's tax
cuts
permanent, and passing new tax cuts of his own, and keeping U.S. troops in
Iraq indefinitely.
The WaPo's Michael Dobbs took a closer look at McCain's inability to do
arithmetic.
There are a number of problems with this magical budgetary balancing
act.
First of all, the suspiciously round $100 billion figure is largely a
figment of the McCain campaign's imagination. I have not been able to find
a
single independent budget expert to vouch for it. McCain's economics
adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, will not say how the campaign arrived at the
figure, other than that it is an extrapolation from various studies..
The CRS study breaks down earmarks by different government departments,
without giving a global figure. According to Scott Lilly, a former
Democratic appropriations staffer now with the Center for American
Progress
Action Fund, the CRS study identifies a total of $52 billion in earmarks
for
a single year. However, much of this money is tied to items such as
foreign
aid to countries like Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, that McCain says he will
not touch.
By most definitions of the term, the amount of money spent on earmarks
is
much lower than the CRS study. The Office for Management and the Budget
came
up with a figure for $16.9 billion in the 2008 appropriation bills.
Taxpayers for Commonsense, an independent watchdog group that focuses on
wasteful spending, identified $18.3 billion worth of earmarks in the 2008
bills, a 23 per cent cut from a record $23.6 billion set in 2005.
How much of this $18.3 billion could be eliminated is a "difficult
question that we have not yet figured out," said Taxpayers for Commonsense
vice-president Steve Ellis. The figure includes such items as $4 billion
for
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which could not be eliminated without
halting hundreds of construction projects around the country. Another big
chunk goes to military construction, including housing for servicemen and
their families, which McCain has also promised not to touch.
Wait, it gets worse.
http://blog.wa****ngtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/mccains_fantasy_war_on_earmark.html
Money trickles up not down.
The Republican Party has been the "fairy" party for a long time. The tax
fairy magically increase tax revenues after tax cuts. The budget fairy
magically finds money where none exists. The military fairy magically
rebuilds the armed forces after their strength has been plundered . and
the
list goes on.
The idea is that Republican always find an easy way to fix things that
require no hard work or sacrifice. The problems will solve themselves.
This
Republican "thinking" is exactly got this nation into the mess it's in now
and I'm hoping the American public files this away as just another scam.
On the topic of the do***ents McCain released related to his health since
2000. Apparently it amounted to more than 12,000 pages.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that the majority of the
population does not ac***ulate 12K+ pages in their health history.
I wonder whether, once we all take advantage of McCain's wonderful health
care plan, we will also be able to take advantage of all those preventive
procedures he's been entitled to.
NOT. McCain has absolutely no clue what the cost of healthcare is. He's
never had to pay a dime for it.
I wonder if someone in the media will be 'smart' enough to ask him the
question about 'who' paid for those 12,000 + pages of health care he
received? And a follow up questions whether the rest of the country can
count on the same policy?
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