The NYT piles on about the candidates’ fiscal irresponsibility:
The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates differ strikingly in their approaches to taxes and spending, but their fiscal plans have at least one thing in common: each could significantly swell the budget deficit and increase the national debt by trillions of dollars, according to tax and budget experts.
The reasons reflect the ideological leanings of the candidates, with Senator John McCain proposing tax cuts that go beyond President Bush’s and the Democrats advocating programs costing hundreds of billions of dollars. But for fiscal experts concerned with the deficit, both approaches are worrisome.
With the national debt soaring to $9.1 trillion from $5.6 trillion at the start of 2001, in part because of the Iraq war and Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, a crucial question about the candidates to succeed him is “whether they are helping to fill the hole or make it deeper,†said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that advocates deficit reduction. “With the proposals they have on the table, it looks to me like all three would make it deeper.â€
The authors continue by criticizing John McCain’s tax cut proposals (I missed where they noted that all three candidates want to abolish or reform the Alternative Minimum Tax) and Sens. Clinton and Obama’s promises not to increase taxes on the middle class. Also missing is any chiding for the increased discretionary spending we’ve seen in recent years.
The article also manages to get in a dig on the costs of the war in Iraq without noting that none of the candidates are proposing anything which would materially lower costs from that sector. This steals a bit from my own thunder (I’m working on a post on this subject) but increasing our level of troop commitment to Afghanistan and redeploying troops from Iraq to elsewhere in Iraq or the Middle East will probably result in a cost increase rather than a decrease.
