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McCain's dubious budget claims
newsweek.com — McCain seems to say that he can save $100 billion by cutting out earmarks. But budget experts say that cutting earmarks would actually save very little. And questioned more closely, McCain's campaign now says that his planned savings have nothing to do with eliminating earmarks.
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- jforjools, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3Forgive the paraphrasing. This is a truly great 4-page article that I hope you were able to read in its entirety.
Surprise #1:
"And Scott Lilly, a senior fellow with the liberal Center for American Progress, told us that "there's no evidence that if you took earmarks out, federal spending would go down."
Surprise #2:
"McCain now says that many earmarks aren't really wasteful spending at all. For example, ...[earmarks include] $4.3 billion in aid to Israel and Egypt. Another $16.1 billion was earmarked for military construction and veterans affairs,military construction and veterans affairs, and $9.4 billion more was earmarked for defense spending. That's $41 billion – or more than two-fifths of the amount of earmark spending McCain cites. But McCain has no plans to cut those particular earmarks. "
From srprise #3:
"His [McCain's] economic adviser tells us that budget cuts cannot, "by definition," arise simply by eliminating earmarks.
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....And, of course, it's no big surprise that if you add all the earmarks up for one year, even using the broadest terms, you won't get anywhere near the $100billion per year savings that McCain boasts.
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