the party of small government

[sisyphusshrugged]

Our Fearless Leader has been attacking Kerry on the stand for his exorbitant spending plans.

It turns out that his own are more than 50% more exorbitant

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.

Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.

And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.

Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.

The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans

Conservatives? Libertarians? Chirp?

Comments

[cheshyre]

And they're 50% more than the scary number they made up to tar their opponent...

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

I want that whole friggin' adminstration to suffer a massive hard pretzel incident.

[misanthropoid.livejournal.com]

I really don't care which of these fellows wins the presidency. I'm just hoping that November breaks up the powers a bit. I'm convinced that having either party in control of the white house and both houses of congress will result in just this sort of runaway spending. Politicians on both sides have become addicted to social engineering and have no sense of fiscal responsibility. Since we've forgotten the meanings of both "bipartison" and "compromise" our last remaining hope financially is a return to gridlock.