The half-trillion-dollar hole (St Louis Today editorial)

[struggle4progress]

08.03.2008 9:00 pm
By Editorial Board

Amid the hoopla of the presidential campaign last week, as candidates were delivering their hopeful economic messages, a dull missive from the government’s bean counters landed with a thud:

The White House Budget Office said it expects next year’s federal deficit to hit a record $482 billion, and that doesn’t count the full cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add those costs and the deficit grows to well over half a trillion dollars. It will grow larger still if Treasury has to bail out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
A half-trillion dollar deficit casts considerable gloom over the hopeful talk of the presumptive presidential candidates. It makes Republican John McCain’s tax-cutting plan look like fiscal lunacy. It makes Democrat Barack Obama’s plans for near-universal health care coverage look like wishful thinking.

Mr. McCain wants to remove the expiration dates on the tax cuts that were enacted in the early years of the Bush administration and also cut other taxes on individuals and businesses. That would shrink Uncle Sam’s revenues by $600 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. If Mr. McCain also continues the war in Iraq, the deficit will turn monstrous.

Mr. Obama has advocated raising taxes on well-off people, mainly those making more than $250,000 per year, while trimming taxes for people with modest incomes. His plan would add $800 billion to tax collections over 10 years, but his plans for near-universal health coverage easily could eat that up ...

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/published-editorials/2008/08/the-half-trillion-dollar-hole/

[roamer65]

1. Obama should consider a single-payor health system.

It will actually begin to control health care costs.

[Cha]

2. Rec'd ~ mccain wants to have permenant tax cuts

so his mediawhore base will continue to prop up his sagging rhetoric while the Nation starves for infrastructure.