Here's the bottom line:
Obama 10 Year Deficit Forecast : $3 Trillion
McCain 10 Year Deficit Forecast : $6 Trillion
I know which one of those looks better than the other, but they're both bad!
Obama's woes fall mainly to over ambitious spending, and McCain's root from hyper-expansion of Bush's corporate tax cuts. Between the two, obviously Obama's looks better due to it's smaller deficit. Plus I personally believe he's much more likely to stop exploding bombs, which is a serious albatross around our fiscal necks. But this is still like choosing between a triple root canal and hernia surgery. I'd prefer to pass on both!
One bright spot (kinda) near the end of the article:
"I think they're going to have to abandon their impulses -- McCain with greater tax cuts, Obama with more and greater spending," Dolan said. "But they're not going to campaign on that."Now I know that there's only one truth about forecasts. They're always wrong. So maybe we'll get lucky, and this will just be a future example of incorrect doom and gloom. But the next President will inherit a mess, and it's going require hard decisions to clean it up.
3 comments:
I feel like Obama is much more likely to curtail, or at least streamline his spending, than McCain is to give up some of his tax cuts for the wealthy, or (Gasp!) actually raise taxes.
Democratic spending is often tied to problems that have existed for many, many years. And, the solutions are often more carefully considered than the situations that cause Republicans to spend money and run us into record deficits.
Republican spending is often the result of things that THEY'VE wanted to do for a long time, but that usually take some kind of frightening catastrophe in order to get the rest of the country to agree to it. i.e. "Oh shit! Terrorists hate our freedom! Forget healthcare, we need a gazillion dollars worth of bombs, ASAP!"
It's pretty amazing seeing the lists of former (and sometimes current) Republicans who are getting rich from both the military industrial complex, or from corporate deregulation.
Hey, thanks for the comment. In general, I agree with you. The one concern I have about an Obama administration, however, is that it would occur with solid Democrat control also in the House and Senate.
This was a nightmare when Bush II had the same Republican advantage for 6 years. Though I lean my support to the Dems over the Repubs, the one thing that I know works best is gridlock. That was a big part of the gains made on the national debt issue under Clinton.
The most important thing to me is ending war. I'm fearful that McCain won't only not do that, but may even expand on it with Iran.
What I'd like to see in a dream world is our wars ended, and our industrial military complex brought home and redirect toward domestic infrastructure and domestic problems. We'd still be spending a lot of money, but it would be in an area were it would help support our economy rather than drag it down.
yeah.. part of what prevents the kind of radical investment in our infrastructure that will improve QOL in our country and CREATE a shitload of jobs, is the Republicans and their demonizing of words like "socialism" or "entitlement".
Hopefully, an Obama presidency, backed by a solid majority in both houses of congress, will be just what we need to get these programs started to the point where average citizens will realize that infrastructure is WORTH paying for.
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