One of Bush’s absolute favorite lines in his campaign speech is about how a Kerry presidency would cost an additional $2 trillion. Consider this exchange from an event in Michigan yesterday:
Bush: I’m running against a fellow who, thus far, has promised over $2 trillion of new federal spending.
Audience: Booo!
Bush: Yes. And we haven’t even gotten in the stretch run yet. So they asked him, how are you going to pay for it? He said, oh, we’ll just tax the rich. You’ve heard that before, haven’t you? That’s why the rich hire lawyers and accountants, so you get stuck with the bill.
Aside from the fact that Bush continues to repeat that nonsensical line about allowing the wealthy not to pay their fair share of the taxes, Bush uses that $2 trillion attack almost every day.
What Bush doesn’t tell his audiences, however, is that his own plans for the next four years would cost 50 percent more than Kerry’s.
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.
A staple of Bush’s stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator’s campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
That seems like a pretty important detail. I wonder why Bush hasn’t mentioned it.
Bush’s pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush’s agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president’s annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Bush’s platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year’s federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.
Now, in a normal political world, Bush would be embarrassed by this front-page revelation and quickly stop talking about Kerry’s $2 trillion price tag since his own plan costs $1 trillion more than his opponent’s. Of course, we live in a bizarro political world, where facts and truth are largely irrelevant, so Bush will no doubt continue to use this line and just assume voters won’t know better.