Senator Conrad’s Editorial in Fargo Forum today

Senator Kent Conrad wrote an editorial in the Fargo Forum today denouncing President Bush’s spending and the growing federal debt. In his editorial he also writes as to why he endorses Barack Obama’s candidacy.
I completely agree with Sen. Conrad that our alarming federal debt and the concern of the baby-boomer generation retiring and rising health care costs is putting our country in a severe financial hardship. What I DON’T agree with is that Barack Obama is committed to “confronting our long-term fiscal challenges” as quoted:

My concern about debt and our long-term outlook is one of the chief reasons why I support Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy. Obama is committed to confronting our long-term fiscal challenges and, importantly, supports the general approach of my bipartisan fiscal task force bill. We need a president who won’t be afraid to make the tough choices that lay ahead. Obama is the best candidate to put our country back on a sound fiscal course.

Senator Conrad is wrong. Barack Obama (and Billary Clinton) both have massive spending plans that they have no clue how they will pay for if either of them become President, which sorry to tell you folks, is a pretty likely scenario. Both Clinton and Obama have currently propsed spending increases of roughly $200 billion. That is NEW spending.
These new $200 billion spending proposals include our favorite, Universal Health Care, housing foreclosure assistance, tax cuts for those families with incomes under $75,000 and a $4,000 credit for college tuition. The big one that nobody seems to be discussing in detail is the newly formed “Global Poverty Act” which will take 0.07% of our Gross National Product (roughly $65 billion annually) to aid in the fight against global poverty. This Global Poverty Act will equal roughly $845 billion by 2016, essentially the same cost of fighing the war in Iraq which is estimated to be $1 trillion by the time it is complete.
It appears to me Conrad’s endorsement of Obama as the man to fight fiscal irresponsibility is going to be fought by increased taxation on the wealthy and corporations (which hinders the free economy), increased government regulation over health care and the banking industry (which costs a LOT of money and certainly won’t work), and increased foreign aid rather than spending that $845 billion to fight poverty at home right here in America.