The big news today is that McShame will say he will balance the budget by the end of his first term as president.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico.
The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term.
As Josh Marshall points out, the most interesting statement in this Politico article is the following:
“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.”
Here’s the big question — What savings???? The way this is written, would lead one to conclude McCain has again flipped on his previous statements saying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be over in the next 4 years. Ummm, this sure sounds like a timeline to end the war.
However, there is something else from McCain’s budget points I also need to address:
Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent.
The problem with this is where will this lost revenue be made up? Multinational corporations are hiding the bulk of their assets in other countries, which causes less revenue from taxes to be collected here, which in turn, has increased your tax burden. Not to mention that the IRS isn’t even bothering to audit corporations anymore, but instead are going after smaller businesses.
This is to businesses what the individual tax rate structure is to the middle class.
