Jewish World Review April 9, 2004 / 19 Nissan, 5764
Robert Robb
Fact checking Kerry's federal budget plans
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John Kerry is right that the country would benefit from an honest debate
about the federal budget.
Unfortunately, in his speech and proposals on Wednesday, he didn't begin
one.
Now, certainly Republicans have lost any claim to be the party of fiscal
discipline. Spending has been increasing twice as fast with Republicans in
control of both the White House and Congress as it did under the divided
government of the Clinton years.
Nor, despite renewed vows of austerity, is there any reason to believe that
Republicans will mend their ways. The latest highway spending bill will
require either an increase in the gas tax or a higher federal deficit.
So, there's room for a Democrat to make a credible claim to be a better
fiscal steward than President Bush.
But thus far, Kerry has not made it.
Kerry would, first of all, eliminate the income tax reductions for people
making over $200,000 a year. Put aside, for the moment, the economic effect
that might have, or the fairness of returning to a top federal income tax
rate of nearly 40 percent.
If Kerry applied all the revenue such a tax increase would produce to debt
reduction, the deficit this year would still be more than $400 billion. So,
increasing taxes on the rich hardly balances the budget.
Kerry, however, doesn't plan to dedicate the additional revenue to deficit
reduction. He wants to spend it on education and health care.
So, in reality, Kerry's proposed deficit is the same as Bush's, just at a
higher spending level.
Kerry claims to be willing to impose more spending discipline than Bush in
the future. In fact, he advocated limiting the increase in federal spending
to the rate of inflation.
Given that inflation is running at just one to two percent a year, that's
quite a pledge.
But then, there are the exceptions. According to Kerry, the inflation cap
wouldn't apply to education, homeland security, defense, Social Security,
Medicare and other entitlement programs.
The exceptions add up to a whopping 85 percent of the federal budget.
Kerry also would reinstate the pay-as-you-go budget rules from the 1990s,
and unlike Bush, apply them to tax cuts as well. New spending programs or
tax cuts would have to be "paid for" with specified spending reductions or
revenue increases, or across-the-board spending cuts would automatically
kick in.
Of course, the same exceptions apply, which means that any offsetting
reductions would come from a very narrow base.
That makes it highly improbable that Kerry really would abide by his own
proposed budget rules.
For example, Kerry favors extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less
than $200,000 a year. Three of those the child tax credit, the 10 percent
lowest tax bracket, and eliminating the marriage penalty expire as of
this year.
Extending them, however, would cost far more than the proposed inflationary
increase in the 15 percent of the budget Kerry puts on the table for
offsets.
In other words, under Kerry's budget rules, unprotected programs would have
to be cut below existing spending levels to retain these working class tax
benefits.
It's highly doubtful that a President Kerry would actually propose that. In
fact, Republicans have calculated that Kerry has already advocated spending
increases of more than $1.9 trillion over the next ten years.
Kerry did highlight legislation he has cosponsored with John McCain on
corporate welfare. Patterned after the base-closing process, a commission
would make recommendations about eliminating corporate subsidies that
Congress would have to vote up or down as a package.
It's a good idea. But even McCain estimates that it will save only tens of
billions a year. That's better than pocket change, but, again, not enough
to change the basic budget challenge.
Reducing the federal deficit isn't rocket science: Spending has to increase
more slowly than revenues.
With the economic recovery, federal revenues are estimated to grow at an 8
percent rate over the next five years. So, even modest spending restraint
can produce meaningful deficit reduction.
There's reason to doubt that Republicans are up to the task. But at this
point, no reason to believe that Kerry would do better.
JWR contributor Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic. Comment by clicking here.
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