BOSTON — Trying to reverse partisan stereotypes, Democrat John Kerry (search) is launching a campaign to portray himself as a fiscal conservative, comparing his economic strategy with the $6 trillion in unpaid spending that he says President Bush has proposed over the next 10 years.
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“We intend to run to President Bush’s right on this,” said Roger Altman, who was deputy treasury secretary under President Clinton and is advising Kerry’s campaign.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the Kerry campaign estimate is “specious.” He said the president’s budget proposal would cut the deficit in half over the next five years.
Kerry’s hardly a spendthrift, but let’s be honest: the charge against Bush ain’t “specious.” Bush hasn’t found a program — foreign or domestic — that he doesn’t like to toss dollars at. The federal government has ballooned under his watch, growing at a rate not seen since the Nixon administration. Some of this spending is a result of the war on terror and some of it is a result of the economic downturn (Bush’s approach has been to tax like Reagan, spend like FDR). But a lot of it is pure pork.
Will a second-term Bush administration spend less than a first-term Kerry administration? Maybe. We’ll have to wait for Bush and Kerry to tell us what they plan to cut. Oh, and given Bush’s record, doubts are resolved in favor of the new guy.
(Can you tell I’m getting sick of this administration? What’s a liberal Republican/pro-business Demo-hawk to do?)
oh, please.
Revenue has fallen off a cliff.
It’ss down to its lowest level as a percentage of GDP since Eisenhower.
That’s the real problem.
Here, here, Von!
Perhaps a political challenge is in order?
How many of you fine folks will join me in a crusade to end the obscene spending and these idiotic budget deficits by;
1. Abolishing the Dept of Education;
2. Abolishing HUD
3. Abolishing Department of Energy;
4. Means-testing Social Security & Medicare;
5. Cutting the Dept. of Agriculture in half; and
6. Firing 20 – 30% of all government employees.
Shoot, we would have balanced budgets as far as the eye can see!
Who’s with me? 🙂
Revenue has fallen off a cliff.
Huh?
Yeah, OK, true! What the heck does it have to do with Bush’s 30%+ increases in discretionary spending?
Unfortunately Kerry might be able to run to Bush’s right on the deficit, not because Kerry has any fiscal responsibility whatsoever, but rather because Bush doesn’t either. Of course when Kerry suggests idiotic things like the idea that there should have been even more spending in the latest Medicare bill, I suspect that he won’t actually run to Bush’s right on the issue.
Can we get rid of the expensive and 3rd world damaging farm subsidies yet?
Can we means test Social Security and Medicare yet?
No? Then call me when either party is serious about the budget.
Hey, now, livin’ in a farm state (Indiana), I gotta defend them thar third world farm subsidies. Save the family farm! Little pink houses, baby, for you and me. (And other assorted myths.)
Seriously, though I ain’t quite as abolishment-minded as my good friend Navy Davy, I would like to see a privatization of social security and a complete overhaul of medicare.
Cue, now, Thorley, who will undoubtedly tell me that total Republican control of the House, Senate, and Presidency is the best route to both of those ends. And he may be right. Or not.
Yeah, OK, true! What the heck does it have to do with Bush’s 30%+ increases in discretionary spending?
Because, cher von, there are two sides to the ledger.
In the new budget, Bush’s increased spending is mostly for pork and political porn like defense and homeland security spending (I say this because it largely isn’t actually tailored to threats on a rational basis. We don’t need more submarines, we need more friggin’ troops!); at the same time, he’s been proposing deep cuts in scientific research.
Von,
…. I would like to see a privatization of social security and a complete overhaul of medicare.
I like that! But I doubt Senator Kerry, in 20 years of the Senate, has EVER voted to slow the growth of Social Security or Medicare spending.
The Democratic Party is politically wedded to the unending expansion of entitlement programs.
But, [Sigh], I must concede that Bush has been a big-spender too. Rats.
The Democratic Party is politically wedded to the unending expansion of entitlement programs.
Yeah, that’s why Clinton worked so hard to stop the Welfare reform…
“Cue, now, Thorley, who will undoubtedly tell me that total Republican control of the House, Senate, and Presidency is the best route to both of those ends.”
Worked so far!
The best way to limit future spending is a split government. I don’t know what the best way is to implement cuts. Grover’s strategy of starving the government should work in the abstract, but it depends on the nature of the following cuts being rational, not political. Fat chance, from either side.
Medicare & Social Security consume, like, 50 – 75% of the budget, not welfare.
Clinton who? 🙂
Oh yeah, that fellow who ain’t in office anymore — I thought we wuzn’t supposed to be bringin’ him up when we discuss current events:)
And for anyone else who likes rational evaluation of federal spending, these guys are worth paying attention to.
Medicare & Social Security consume, like, 50 – 75% of the budget
More like 40%
Also, I’m not an economist, but the fact that social security disbursements come out of a trust fund may be relevant to the discussion.
One of the things the Bush Administration realized early on in their analysis of the Clinton Presidency was the importance of the stock market in reducing the deficit.
The entire deficit had been eliminated in about three years time – paid off solely by enormous income taxes on hyper-inflated stock. That stock-market filled the national coffers almost overnight.
The reason for Bush’s feel-free approach to spending is in part a two prong approach to handling the deficits. By keeping a firm reign on interest rates and the stock market he will see huge revenues pour into the Federal coffers after April 15th each year.
This administration’s sole deficit reducing strategy is embraced in maintaining and restoring high value to America’s corporate stocks. If it works, we will see that his programs (including missile defense and manned space exploration – both of which I fully support) are fully fundable and by the end of his second term we will see a “surprise” surplus yet again.
This strategy of income building also allowed for moderate tax cuts and reformation of the tax code.
We will see how it plays out.
(in the meanwhile re-invest in stocks and encourage all your friends to return to the stock market 😉
uh-huh, sdai.
That’s why they’ve been fervently trying to reduce taxes on unearned income across the board.
Yes, Bush will no doubt reap the massive rewards of the stock market right after he gets done eliminating the dividend tax and all those other pesky forms of ‘double’ taxation.
(in the meanwhile re-invest in stocks and encourage all your friends to return to the stock market 😉
Oh, you know, as soon as they get jobs, I will…
“The best way to limit future spending is a split government.”
Didn’t work that way in last two years of Clinton.
Might be reasons and motivations, but there almost always are.
Here’s background on that assertion, bob.
Von wrote:
Highly doubtful given that Kerry voted for most of the new spending with the notable exceptions of the $87 Billion for Iraq and that he preferred the $900 Billion Medicare prescription drug benefit to the $534 Billion one.
One of my Ag Econ profs worked for the DNC/PPI when they wrote “Freedom to Farm” in 1996 and I cheered with most of my classmates when they promised to “end agricultural subsidies as we know it.” The problem was that while we freed up farmers to grow for the “market” and eliminated “most” subsidies, farmers received deficiency payments until the subsidies were eliminated and were still eligible for “emergency relief” during bad weather and such. The end result was that we probably ended up paying more to eliminate the subsidies than the subsidies cost plus when Harkin (who hated Freedom to Farm because he liked farm subsidies) became the Senate Ag Chair, they brought the subsidies back and we still have emergency relief.
Which pretty much leaves only Bush as the candidate since he (a) supports personal retirement accounts for Social Security, (b) has said he would not rule out raising the retirement age (which Kerry said he opposes) which if we could do the same for Medicare would fix much of the problem for that as well, and (c) his commission endorsed COLA adjustment and going from wage-indexing to price-indexing.
No but I would say that the idea that “divided” government is the solution is not necessarily supported by the facts when one looks beyond merely annual numbers but instead the details of the spending and considers that (a) Democrats controlled the Senate for most of the first two years of the Bush administration (you know when we got the Farm and Education bills), (b) the Medicare prescription drug benefit was more expensive than the first two versions in order to get Senate Democrats to drop their opposition to it, and (c) entitlement programs are on auto-pilot and gridlock only means that we are less likely to get any sort of reform before the baby-boom generation retires.
In which case a Kerry presidency would mean that (a) any entitlement reform is pretty much shot as Bush was more proactive then members of either House and defeating him would be seen as a repudiation of reform, (b) while Kerry might face opposition in the House, he would probably be able to peel off votes from more liberal Republicans in the Senate and it would be two-on-one, and (c) it is patently silly to punish a candidate who overspends by voting for one who wants to spend even more in the hopes that someone will stop him later.
Navy Davy wrote:
Agreed and eliminate the federal regulations on education.
Agreed
Agreed but IIRC the Department of Energy does or did handle some functions for our nuclear arsenal which should be moved over to Defense or Homeland Security.
And raise the retirement age to 70, reduce the COLAs by about 1% (the amount by which they overstate inflation), switch from wage-indexing to price-indexing for Social Security, implement personal retirement accounts for Social Security and a voucher system for Medicare.
Only half?
I would also get rid of the Department of Commerce, much of the Department of Labor, most of HHS, and have the States keeps the federal gasoline excise tax in their respective States rather than send it to DC to have it redistributed back by the pork-ladened appropriations process.
Only if because we have eliminated 20-30% of federal jobs. I don’t generally believe in firing just to reach to arbitrary number but if they’re being eliminated because their jobs are gone, I can go with that.
“Here’s background on that assertion, bob.”
Ah, well. Went long googling, my memory was that both 1999 and 2000 had big domestic spending binges at the very end of budgetary negotiatons…
but I can find no adequate evidence so I retract
Bob,
Here is the actual data.
Federal outlays from 1998 to 2000 were 1652.6, 1701.9, and 1788.8 Billion respectively.
I can very well see Kerry running to Bush’s right on this; he’s been on both sides of practically every issue. Why not fiscal responsibility?
And he could probably score a lot of cool points by bringing on that 50 cent per gallon gas tax, provided he makes it progressive. Hard to means-test at the pump, though.
I can very well see Kerry running to Bush’s right on this; he’s been on both sides of practically every issue. Why not fiscal responsibility?
Pssst…Slarti…shhhhh….didn’t you get the memo?
Ixnay on the ipflay-opflay…Bush has been caught out…and he doesn’t have 20 years of service to defend him…
President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief
I’m sure they sent the memo to all the important deathbeasts…have you been demoted?
If you want more budget discipline, you need to have Congress and the Presidency in opposite party hands. One poster says this did not work in the last 2 years of Clinton. Well, the last 2 years of Bush I ant the first 6 years of Clinton worked better than any other combination since 1980.
It is hard to see how the Republicans could win the Presidency while losing the Congress. Losing the Presidency and
maintaining Congress is an easy thing to see. So, von, your logical move is to advocate the defeat of Bush while supporting Republicans who care about deficits. As a bonus, you will get less White House mendacity.
Edward, I think the promotional concept that boils down to “our flip-flopper is better than yours” is not exactly a novel idea. But given the commercials on TV these days (with the notable exception of the Tiger Woods Caddyshack takeoff) I can see how the publicists might think otherwise.
And I think Kerry’s left himself exposed with regards to his proposed, highly regressive gas tax. Muahahaha.