How does it add up?

Posted By Elgin Hushbeck

If you total up all the proposals that Kerry has promised in his campaign it come to 1.7 trillion in new spending over the next 10 year, most of this is in proposals he says he will push through in the first 100 days.(His health care proposal alone is projected to cost $900 billion) He claims he will do this by repealing the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000, plus a series of other tax increases for “the rich.” This would raise around $700 billion over ten years. This leaves him $1 trillion dollars in the hole. And this is all assuming that his new projects are limited to their projected costs, whereas the history of such programs is that they almost always end up costing much more than projected.

On top of all this he claims he will cut the budget deficit in half during his first term, although since Bush’s current budget already projects to do this, it is a neutral proposal except that does limit his options as to how he will make up the difference. He has also talk some about “Middle Class” tax cuts but it is not clear exactly what he means or what impact they would have.

So just where should we assume that Kerry is not being truthful
1) On spending
2) On taxes
3) On the deficit,
4) All the above.

Mar 25th, 2004

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