by Teh Nutroots | Ho ha ha. Ha ha hee. He's going to turn seawater into crude oil right before your very eyes as well. Right. Via Mike Allen at The Politico:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico.
“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.” (Emphasis added)
Victory, eh? And cutting 'entitlements'. It won't work.
Yes, these are every Republican's favorite talking points. Their constituents are the Americans who haven't noticed that anything's changed since, say, the Eighties and/or Nineties, and who actually think the reason they're poorer now and their money doesn't go as far is that the government is taking their money.
McCain’s emphasis on balancing the budget is likely to excite conservatives, who have remained skeptical of his candidacy, and provoke derision from Democrats, who will argue that it’s a warmed-over version of proposals that President Bush failed to enact. (The Politico)
It's all bollocks, of course. Can't be done.
Jason Furman, Obama's economic policy director, called McCain's pledge “preposterous." Furman pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office now estimates a 2013 deficit of $443 billion, assuming the Bush tax cuts are extended. And he estimated that McCain would have to cut discretionary spending—including defense—by roughly one-third to bring the budget into the black by then.
"McCain would have to pay for all of his new tax cuts and other proposals and then, on top of that, cut an additional $443 billion from the budget—which is 81 percent of Medicare spending or 78 percent of all discretionary spending outside of defense," Furman said. (The Politico)
After all, do you know why we have this deficit that McCain is promising to control?
The budget was in surplus when Bush took office but now is deeply in the red—$410 billion, the White House projects, blaming the demands of war and homeland security.(The Politico)
Andrew Sullivan says:
This [promise to balance the budget] s designed to tickle deficit hawks like yours truly (and if I believed it, it would). [emphasis added]
And TEH NUTROOTS says:
Whenever the country gets poorer and the squeeze really starts to hurt the actual individual people who don't have much of a fallback, the first thing that occurs to Republicans when the money runs out is to go after that torn-up old net that protects the poor, the sick, and the elderly.
Not that most of our programs don't need reforming, starting with reining in the big companies who contract to administer the benefits and bilk the government out of mind-boggling sums. And no Republican, despite their claims of 'fiscal conservatism', is going to start by taking a long look at, say, medical contractors. And no Republican either is going to take a really useful look at corporate welfare.
I wonder how many aging baby boomers, including comparatively well-off ones who would have to pay for their parents' medical care as well as their own if McCain could make these imaginary cuts, will buy into the horse manure about some imaginary 'victory dividend'?
I'm talking here not about the Wall Streeters, whose huge holdings it's always been the business of the GOP to conserve, but the Main Streeters, who are struggling --- literally --- to go on owning the roof over their heads or to send kids to college.
Obama at least knows that actual individual Americans are way less worried at this stage about balancing the federal budget than they are about getting through the next couple of years (or longer).
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also is spending the week emphasizing economic issues, and plans to tout the family-friendly, bottom-up benefits of his proposals.
Obama begins the week in Charlotte, N.C., with what his campaign calls “a discussion on economic security for America’s families.”.(The Politico)
Listen, I wanted Hillary, but it does my brain in to read that any former Clinton supporter is deranged enough to think of allowing another Republican in the White House for another four years.
The next four years are going to be cruel hard on a lot of people, including a lot of the ones who are mad at Obama.
The last thing America needs is air-filled rhetoric about balancing the budget from a guy who said --- before he forgot he said it --- he doesn't know jack about the economy.
Thanks, Damozel, for posting this.
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