McCain Plans To Balance National Budget With Cuts In Entitlement Spending
McCain isn’t being real specific about his plans just yet, but this at least sounds hopeful:
Right now, based on what McCain and the campaign have said, McCain proposes more than $650 billion a year in tax cuts, which is equivalent to a third of domestic spending, and is offset by, first, $160 billion in unspecified domestic cuts. (Note: the McCain campaign disputes the premise that some of the tax cuts, like altering the way companies deduct expenses, would cost anything in the long-run so they don’t provide off-sets for it.) The rest would come from economic growth after some sort of rapid sequence intubation of fresh optimism into the economy and large-scale reform of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. On a conference call today, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin hinted that the onus would be on Democrats to cooperate with McCain on entitlement reform, implying that if they don’t, the Democratic Congress would be to blame for the deficit, not McCain.
There isn’t going to be a solution to this nation’s budget woes until some leader stands up and takes meaningful action to actually reduce entitlement spending on programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And by “reduce” I mean actually cutting spending, not just reducing the rate of growth in spending.
So a move would be a painful one to make in modern politics given that those individuals and groups who have a vested interest in keeping those entitlements growing as they are would put up a mighty fit, but it needs to be done regardless.
Whether or not McCain is that sort of a leader remains to be seen, but campaigning on this issue could be one way for the man to win his way back into the hears and minds of conservatives.
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JimH
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