Why McCain and Obama Both Suck.
According to an article I read yesterday titled “Federal deficit soaring, but McCain, Obama offer no answers,” the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2008 is now projected to be a cool $407 billion, or about double what it was in fiscal year 2007 (the record is $413 billion in 2004). [1]
And as the article’s title implies, with less than 60 days to the election neither McCain nor Obama have offered a plan to stop spending more than we make as a nation.
As a matter of fact, the only “choice” you have in this election is whether you want to add about $3.5 trillion or $5 trillion to the national credit card.
To quote:
Mammoth federal-budget deficits feed inflation, make America dependent on foreign lenders, cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on the growing national debt and drain capital savings from more productive investments.
The widening gap between what the government spends and the revenue it brings in is sure to weigh on the next president and impede his efforts to spend on new or larger programs or to cut taxes.
Yet John McCain and Barack Obama show few signs that they’re ready to take tough steps to curb deficits, according to budget analysts.
“I don’t think either candidate is treating the deficit, or the debt, seriously. And I don’t see any proposals from either one that would make the situation any better,” said Robert Bixby , the executive director of the Concord Coalition , a bipartisan budget-watchdog organization.
Maya MacGuineas , the president of the bipartisan Center for a Responsible Federal Budget , said in a statement that both candidates “are promising hundreds of billions more in spending and tax cuts than they are paying for.”
Republican nominee McCain has promised to balance the budget by 2013, but most analysts consider that goal elusive unless lawmakers make radical changes in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid funding. McCain has made no such dramatic proposals.
Obama issued a statement Tuesday on the new data, promising that he’d “bring real change by cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, paying for all his proposals to reduce the deficit” and working toward fiscal responsibility. He’d let tax cuts for the wealthiest earners expire and would impose higher taxes on certain corporations.
However, the Brookings Institution-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center has found that Obama’s tax-reduction plan would increase the national debt by $3.5 trillion by 2018. McCain wants to leave existing tax cuts in place rather than let them expire, which the center said would add $5 trillion to the debt.
I believe that without liberty economics really doesn’t matter.
As such, I understand why at times our nation may need to spend more than we make in order to ensure our safety and way of life.
However, spending more than we make cannot and should not become our way of life.
In an economy as large and complex as the United States’ budget deficits can go on for a long time and not lead to immediate ruin (see this chart from the Congressional Budget Office, “Total Deficit or Surplus, 1965 to 2018.”). [2]
The U.S. economy has grown since 1965 though the United States government has run a deficit.
We have a very long road we can kick the can down.
But the road’s not infinite: to spend more than we make forever is not possible.
If we continue down this path we’ll end up exactly where every other world power that keeps spending more than it makes eventually ends up: in the poor house.
The fact the neither candidate, Obama or McCain, offers a real plan to reduce the deficit (which will only grow larger as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid outlays really kick in), while both claim their respective policies are fiscally responsible is why, as far as I’m concerned, they both suck.
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