No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraphs 8-9: 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. "McCain would have to pay for all of his new tax cuts and other proposals and then, on top of that, cut an additional $443 billion from the budget--which is 81 percent of Medicare spending or 78 percent of all discretionary spending outside of defense," Furman said.
Let's come back to these later...
Paragraph 10: McCain’s tour of swing states is designed to relaunch his candidacy after a high-stakes shakeup last week in his campaign organization, which has been widely criticized as soft and slow compared to the Obama machine.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 11: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also is spending the week emphasizing economic issues, and plans to tout the family-friendly, bottom-up benefits of his proposals.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 12: Obama begins the week in Charlotte, N.C., with what his campaign calls “a discussion on economic security for America’s families.”
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 13: The Obama campaign sought to steal McCain’s thunder by holding a conference call Sunday to portray McCain as out of touch and not up to the job on economic matters.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 14: McCain’s emphasis on balancing the budget is likely to excite conservatives, who have remained skeptical of his candidacy, and provoke derision from Democrats, who will argue that it’s a warmed-over version of proposals that President Bush failed to enact.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 15: The budget was in surplus when Bush took office but now is deeply in the red—$410 billion, the White House projects, blaming the demands of war and homeland security.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 16: McCain begins his tour in Colorado, then goes on to Pennsylvania, Ohio Michigan and Wisconsin—five of this year’s 10 most closely contested states.
No clues as to who is right here, and that carries us to the end of Allen's first page. Pages two and three of the article are pure stenography--summaries of the "plan."
Now let's go back to paragraphs eight and nine...
Now I carry much of the federal budget around in my head 25/8. And the first of my bookmarks is to Peter Orszag and company's summary "The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2008 to 2018" http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8917/01-23-2008_BudgetOutlook.pdf. I know that the CBO baseline projects (assuming spending subject to appropriations growing at the same pace as the economy) the federal goverment spending $3.7T (nominal) on our behalf in 2013--20.2% of GDP in an $18T (nominal), $12,000 per capita. I know that Jason Furman's $443 extension baseline deficit is based on a lowballed forecast of spending subject to appropriations: assuming spending subject to appropriations growing at the same pace as the economy and assuming extension of the Bush tax cuts and of standard one-year tax system patches produces a projected deficit of $580B--3.3% of GDP--and a projected on-budget deficit of $820B--4.5% of GDP, $26,000 per capita--once one recognizes that borrowings from the Social Security Trust Fund do have to be paid back. I know that spending on domestic uses that is allocated by annual appropriations--the park service, the courts, et cetera--peaked at 4.8% of GDP in 1978, was cut to 3.4% of GDP by 2002, was cut to 3.1% of GDP by 2000, and has risen since then to 3.5% of GDP. I know that McCain's defense policy rhetoric is not consistent with defense spending growing more slowly than the economy as a whole. I know that cutting more from spending subject to appropriations has proven impossible both politically and substantively: Americans like and expect federal support for education, their interstate highways, veterans' benefits, their FBI, their courts, TANF, the EPA, the national parks, NASA, et cetera.
In short, I am much more than a "discerning reader." I know a lot of things that tell me that Jason Furman has (a) constructed a scenario that is relatively favorable to the Bushies McCainites, (b) allowed the McCainites to count the Social Security Trust Fund surplus as current tax money to be spent rather than as a fund to be saved in a lockbox to pay for future Social Security deficits, and (c) even so the cuts in spending needed to hit McCain's target are politically impossible and substantively unwise.
