McCain advisor Holtz Eakin Steers clear of the third rail
Asked on a conference call with reporters just how John McCain would balance the budget by 2013, his top economic adviser offered the usual recipe.
“Broad-based efforts at controlling discretionary spending, keeping growth rapid and reviewing programs for their effectiveness.”
Of course, with McCain’s proposed tax cuts, that still may not get the country to a balanced budget.
Which is where Holtz-Eakin’s next statements come in.
McCain, noted his adviser, “has a long history of being someone who can reach across the aisle” to address policy issues.
He’ll “solve big problems and provide leadership,” Holtz-Eakin said, staying vague.
Don’t get what he’s talking about?
It’s the issue that dare not speak its name during a campaign — what to do about those entitlements that take up a much larger slice of the federal budget than any earmarks McCain wants to cut.
What Holtz-Eakin was suggesting, of course, is that McCain would work with Democratic leaders in Congress to address the increasingly heavy fiscal load that will come when baby boomers retire and start drawing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The political challenge is saying during the course of a campaign just how you’d balance the budget by addressing this looming challenge. McCain dares not propose increasing taxes on Social Security for fear of offending his tax-averse GOP base. But he also, wisely, fears the wrath of seniors in such key elderly-heavy states such as Florida and Pennsylvania that would come were he to propose cutting benefits.
So instead it’s mostly a wink and a nod — the suggestion, if not outright proposal, that McCain will work and compromise with Democrats on the Hill to offer the needed harsh medicine that can’t be unsealed until after Election Day.
Basically the McCain camp knows they need to deal with costs, and may need to raise taxes, but unlike Obama don’t want to be honest with the public until after the election, straight talk indeed
NYT says that it isn’t going to happen, in fact he’ll increase the deficits
Senator John McCain is pledging once again to balance the budget by the end of his first term in 2013, his advisers said Monday, reverting to an earlier pledge he had abandoned in April when he proposed a series of costly tax cuts for corporations and high earners and said it might take two terms to balance the budget.
It is unclear how Mr. McCain plans to balance the budget, given that fiscal analysts who have examined his economic plans say that his calls to extend the Bush tax cuts while cutting corporate and other taxes would likely increase the deficit.
…
To pay for his tax cuts, the McCain campaign has called for cutting pork-barrel spending and making entitlements less expensive, but fiscal analysts have questioned whether he could save enough money that way to pay for the tax cuts, and cautioned that the spending cut proposals were far vaguer than the tax cut proposals
In addition McCain is talking about a victory dividende from Iraq and Afghanistan, predicting victory by the end of his first term there, as I said yesterday, that is unlikely, however even if he could, the costs from remaining troops in the countries would still weigh on the deficit, and a withdrawl would put him closer to the Obama camp, which begs the question why support McCain over Obama if both want withdrawl?
