Redstate

Posted at 10:57pm on Jul. 8, 2008 "Reality-Based" Budgeting

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

The Los Angeles Times has taken a look at the Obama fiscal plan and finds it wanting:

"I don't think it all adds up," Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama's spending plans.

"There will definitely need to be a recalibration of these proposals once someone is in office," said Sawhill, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The fiscal situation just isn't going to permit doing what Sen. Obama or anyone else would like."

[. . .]

Obama's staff thinks that ending the Iraq war would free up money -- at least $90 billion a year -- that could be redirected to the new government programs. But it is unclear when that would occur. Obama has not given a clear date by which the Iraq war might end. On Thursday, he said he remained committed to withdrawing combat troops in 16 months. At a debate in September, he would not commit to pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013.

Some budget experts say even a speedy end to the war would not give Obama much money for new programs.

"You cannot justify a longer-term commitment to a program based on a one-time saving on the war in Iraq," said Stuart Butler, who studies domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

In addition, replenishing the military and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan are certain to become expensive priorities once the fighting stops, said Alice Rivlin, who directed the Office of Management and Budget for several years under Clinton.

"Savings from the Iraq war will not be all that great," she said.

Other new sources of revenue in Obama's plan include about $80 billion a year from closing tax loopholes and $100 billion from a variety of cuts in spending and revised government procurement rules.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center examined Obama's plans to eliminate tax loopholes and said it could not confirm the projected savings.

"If you look at official revenue estimates, the numbers come out to be less than half of what they say they're going to raise," said Len Burman, director of the center and a former Treasury official in the Clinton administration, referring to Obama's campaign staff.

It's good and reassuring to see that there exists critical coverage of the Obama fiscal plan, but that coverage needs to expand to more media outlets and the Obama campaign needs to respond to critics who point out that the numbers for Obama's fiscal plan simply do not add up. Thus far, they have done a poor job of defending their intellectual product, even if there has been relatively little in the news concerning the many deficiencies in the Obama fiscal plan.

Posted in Barack Obama | Economy | Fiscal Policy — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:36am on Apr. 14, 2008 Rediscovering the Joys of Deficit Spending

Envisioning a Democratic Future

By blackhedd

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s an election this year, and it’s going to be an important one. Inasmuch as the Democrats are doing their level best to sabotage their chances to win the White House, it’s not a forgone conclusion that Senator McCain will not become President.

But the view from here continues to be that Democrats will either hold steady or gain on Capitol Hill. So while I think the mood of the country still strongly favors conservative policies on a range of issues, including the economy, let’s for a few moments try to discount what a Democratic-controlled future will look like.

It doesn’t take more than a touch of native intelligence to understand that if the Democratic Presidential contenders get their way, we’ll face an enormous amount of new government spending. But they’re also talking about major tax relief for lower and middle income people.

How are they going to square the circle?

Read on…

Posted in AMT | Deficits Growing | Economy | Fiscal Deficits | Fiscal Policy — Comments (24)/ Email this page » / Read More »