John McCain has that annoying rhetorical twitch of saying, “my friends.” It drives me batty. Anywho, keep that under your cap for a moment.
The Arizona senator is promising to balance the budget by the end of his first term, while simultaneously extending the George W. Bush tax cuts, introducing billions of dollars of new tax cuts of his own, and remaining in Iraq as long as is necessary to stabilize that country. Asked how this miracle will be accomplished, McCain told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News This Week on April 20 that he could come up with $100 billion “tomorrow” by vetoing pork-barrel spending bills.
Here’s $100 billion right here for you, George. Two years in a row, the last two years, the president of the United States has signed into law two big spending, pork barrel-laden bills with $35 billion (in earmarks). In the years before that, $65 billion. You do away with those, there’s $100 billion right before you look at any agency.
Pouff! $100 billion in taxpayer money! Saved! Just like that! With a flick of the presidential veto pen!
What are the problems with this Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs? And if you could, please word your answer hilariously.
First of all, the suspiciously round $100 billion figure is largely a figment of the McCain campaign’s imagination.
Zing!
The CRS study breaks down earmarks by different government departments, without giving a global figure. According to Scott Lilly, a former Democratic appropriations staffer now with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the CRS study identifies a total of $52 billion in earmarks for a single year.
OK, well $52 billion is almost $100 billion, I mean it is 52% of it. Maybe he was rounding up?
However, much of this money is tied to items such as foreign aid to countries like Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, that McCain says he will not touch.
Oh. I see. So we can’t just stop payment on the checks? That means it will be less than 52%, doesn’t it?
By most definitions of the term, the amount of money spent on earmarks is much lower than the CRS study. The Office for Management and the Budget came up with a figure for $16.9 billion in the 2008 appropriation bills. Taxpayers for Commonsense, an independent watchdog group that focuses on wasteful spending, identified $18.3 billion worth of earmarks in the 2008 bills, a 23 per cent cut from a record $23.6 billion set in 2005.
Let me put my smarty pants on. $18.3 billion is… (calculating)… 18.3% of McCain’s promise!
How much of this $18.3 billion could be eliminated is a “difficult question that we have not yet figured out,” said Taxpayers for Commonsense vice-president Steve Ellis. The figure includes such items as $4 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which could not be eliminated without halting hundreds of construction projects around the country. Another big chunk goes to military construction, including housing for servicemen and their families, which McCain has also promised not to touch.
So how much can we eliminate?
Bruce Riedl, a budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation, says it might be possible to eliminate roughly half the expenditure on earmarks every year, i.e. around $9 billion, using the Taxpayers for Commonsense figures.
So to John McCain: My friend, you are innumerate.
Or you’re just a liar. I think it’s probably the latter.
It’s just the stupidest lie. “I am going to shave $100 bilion in earmarks, even though there is only $52 billion in earmarks”? Is he fucking high?
