{"id":14643,"date":"2008-02-20T12:45:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T17:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14643.html"},"modified":"2008-02-20T12:45:20","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T17:45:20","slug":"mr-vague-generalities-just-cant-help-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mr-vague-generalities-just-cant-help-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Vague Generalities just can’t help himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

In retrospect, it was incredibly helpful for John McCain to argue last week that one of his biggest points of contention with Barack Obama is his alleged aversion to “specifics<\/a>.” I’ve heard of leading with your chin, but this is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Last week, we talked about a<\/a> couple<\/a> of glaring instances in which McCain seemed wholly incapable of going beyond vague generalities, but ThinkProgress found another gem<\/a> for the list. The subject: the federal budget.<\/p>\n

Now, McCain has always fancied himself something of a deficit hawk, so it didn’t come as too big a surprise to hear the senator argue the other day that he has a “goal” of balancing the budget during his first term. Given that Bush has run the biggest deficits in American history, and the new president will inherit a $400 billion deficit next year, that sounds like a fairly good goal.<\/p>\n

So, how’s McCain going to get there? There are three options: 1) raise taxes; 2) cut spending; or 3) some combination therein. McCain has ruled out the first and third options, ruling out any tax increases for any reason.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

This is even dumber than it might appear at first glance.
\n
\nIt would be discouraging enough if McCain seriously planned to find $400 billion in federal spending to slash — not bloody likely — but as TP explained<\/a>, McCain actually wants to add to Bush’s tax cuts, making it harder<\/i> to reach his “goal.”<\/p>\n

On his campaign website, McCain trumpets a laundry list of tax cuts:<\/p>\n

* Permanently repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
\n* Cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent
\n* Provide all individuals with a $2,500 [health care] tax credit ($5,000 for families)
\n* Expanded health savings accounts
\n* Allow first-year deduction, or “expensing”, of equipment and technology investments.
\n* Establish permanent tax credit equal to 10 Percent of wages spent on R&D.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, hundreds of billions of dollars in additional tax cuts, on top of a deficit that already runs hundreds of billions of dollars. By his own admission, McCain is pretty clueless<\/a> on matters of economics, but maybe one of his adoring fans in the media could press him on why this budget plan is utter nonsense.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s not likely. It’s far more likely that a NYT columnist will use this as an example of why McCain should be praised for being inept and foolish when it comes to ridiculous campaign promises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In retrospect, it was incredibly helpful for John McCain to argue last week that one of his biggest points of contention with Barack Obama is his alleged aversion to “specifics.” I’ve heard of leading with your chin, but this is ridiculous. Last week, we talked about a couple of glaring instances in which McCain seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}