Promises, Promises
The deficit hawks at New America’s US Budget Watch have put out a slightly silly report on the budgetary impact of the presidential campaigns’ proposals. The main tactic seems to be to uncritically accept various assertions. Thus, McCain is said to be proposing to increase the 2013 deficit by somewhere between $275 and $367 billion relative to the CBO “current baseline.” But this involves crediting him, literally, with $159 billion worth of “Implement Unspecified Cuts to Balance the Budget.” Now to be fair, they treat both campaigns equally in this regard, but since Barack Obama is only claiming $50 billion worth of “Implement Unspecified Cuts to Slow Spending” they manage to give McCain a credit of $109 billion extra dollars of magic. This winds up being rather important, since the US Budget Watch methodology charges Obama with proposals to increase the 2013 deficit by $387 billion relative to the current law baseline.
In other words, according to US Budget Watch, even the high-end McCain deficit is smaller than the Obama deficit. But the difference is accounted for exclusively by McCain’s additional $109 billion in unspecified measures!
There’s also this stunning passage:
Senator McCain has proposed an optional, alternative tax system with two rates and a single large standard deduction to replace most existing deductions, exclusions, and credits. According to the McCain campaign, this alternative system would be revenue neutral. On the other hand, outside experts think that because most taxpayers will choose the system in which they pay lower taxes, significant revenue would be lost.
Naturally, they treat the McCain campaign’s $0 estimate as authoritative even though only an idiot would deny that “most taxpayers will choose the system in which they pay lower taxes.
22 Responses to “Promises, Promises”
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August 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
They also apparently consider the candidates equally likely to get their spending proposals through Congress. There’s no question that spending would actually be higher under Obama, but we should pretend otherwise, I guess.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
I’m not sure if this is on topic or not, but something is bugging me. We all know that dems are tax and spend and repubs are for cutting taxes.
Yet, never does anyone discuss two points very much:
1. the percent difference between repubs and dems is usually small, so they are like 97% democratic. If I complained that someone charged 3% more for gas or milk, would anyone take me seriously.
2. Repubs usually say that a tax cut will increase revenue, also known as taxes. But nobody every calls them out on promoting a plan that will increase tax revenues.
At Saddleback, McCain said that he wanted to lower tax rates to increase overall tax revenue. He wants to rake in more money than Obama, according to McCain.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Call me an idiot… but it really depends on how this is implemented. Just as most people don’t itemise deductions (even though it would probably result in lower taxes), if the lower tax bill required opting into a tax band other than the default (ie, it requires extra work, longer tax forms, etc) then I would guess that most people would pay the higher rate. Even simply offering two plans means that taxpayers will have to put in more work researching rates than they otherwise would have to, so if one plan was easier (but coincidently resulted in higher taxese) most people who don’t use an accountant would pay the higher rate.
Essentially, therefore, it sounds like this alternative plan system will save money for those wealthy enough to employ an accountant, but anyone who does their own taxes is more likely to pay rates higher than necessary.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
You don’t need to use an accountant, for $50 Turbo Tax will perform the same service. Anyway, I would assume that anyone who pays a mortgage will go with the itemized deductions, at which point doing an alternate calculation for the no-deduction rate wouldn’t be much extra effort.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Shorter Matt: “No fair! Your overly simple, unrealistic rampant speculation slightly favors the other guy! You must be wrong because my own overly simple rampant speculation favors my guy!”
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
They also apparently consider the candidates equally likely to get their spending proposals through Congress. There’s no question that spending would actually be higher under Obama, but we should pretend otherwise, I guess.
The report is about what the deficit would be. Each candidate proposes spending, and taxes. Obama’s plan results in a smaller deficit than McCain’s. =
Are you saying a Democratic congress would give McCain even less spending than he requests? The opposite is much more likely. But it’s still beside the point.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Mike either believes in magic, or considers $109 billion a year “slightly”
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