That pink sugary stuff is flowing faster and faster out of the tap over at the McCain household these days. Sure, he's had his delusions for a long time now, but this one about the economy, the war and somehow balancing the budget in four years has got to be one of his loonier suggestions to date.
From Politico:
“In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday.
“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”
The pledge is a return to an earlier position he'd later backed away from. On April 15, McCain backed off a February pledge to balance the budget in his first term when asked about it by Michael Cooper of The New York Times, who reported that McCain said “at a news conference … that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years.”
McCain advisers admit that the document is a repackaging of previous policies, without dramatic new initiatives. Some Democratic officials had thought McCain might try to make a splash by proposing a bold middle-class tax cut.
Nah, McCain would never try to help out the middle class with a tax cut, like with George Bush, those things are only for the very wealthy. What I do expect is for McCain to try and mess with Social Security like George Bush did. I do expect him to make false claims such as balancing the budget by using the same failed policies as George Bush did. And I certainly expect him to make bone-headed arguments about using savings from the war (that is meant to last 100 years) to pay for deficit reduction when the only money being saved is what we are not financing with debt. Paying off one creditor with another creditor's money that might sound like a good plan to you.......
Senator McCain, here in the real world we would call that check-kiting.
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