 "Gimme back that Social Security money, I need it to fund my war!"
-- Things John McCain might say on the campaign trail this week
(to be read in the voice of Homer Simpson's father...)
Drudge blares, and the Politico reports, that John McCain will unveil the new centerpiece to his economic agenda tomorrow/Monday (and you thought it was that $300 million CASH PRIZE!!!) and it's a mish-mash of old policies, repackaged with an old people poison pill. Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin say McCain:
... 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 vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term. Ya think? Perhaps this would be a good time to bring back the highlights of John McCain's oft-denied, but very much "on the record" support for privatizing Social Security. McCain is making his big "announce" in a week when both he and Barack Obama will be focusing on the economy. Says Old Man River:
“In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday. And now for the head scratcher:
“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.” What the hell is he talking about? The "savings from victory in Iraq and Afghanistan?" Huh??? That sounds like something Baghdad Bob would say, or Kim Jong Il. That must have come from the old advisers, not the brand new, Karl Rove team... Of course, it wouldn't be a John McCain story without a flip-flop:
The pledge is a return to an earlier position he'd later backed away from. On April 15, McCain backed off a February pledge to balance the budget in his first term when asked about it by Michael Cooper of The New York Times, who reported that McCain said “at a news conference … that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years.” ... without something really, really old:
McCain advisers admit that the document is a repackaging of previous policies, without dramatic new initiatives. Some Democratic officials had thought McCain might try to make a splash by proposing a bold middle-class tax cut.
Team Obama, what's your take?
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. Which he will do, with the savings wrought from ending the conflict on the Korean peninsula, securing victory in Europe and Japan, and wringing every last penny of savings by calling on all Americans to cash in their Bush war bonds! Yeesh...
| Labels: 2008 election, John McCain, presidential candidates, Social Security |
