I had a conversation in another thread with SD Realtor where I promised to look into how Obama’s fiscal plan would affect balancing the budget.
Looking into it today, I figured the fair thing to do would be to look into both candidates plans on that front.
Predictably, both the McCain and Obama website do not get down to exact figures – they both just state general goals. Both candidates discuss balancing the budget somewhat on their website.
McCain discusses a balanced budget in his “Jobs for America” paper, at the link given above. That paper has a section entitled “Bring The Budget To Balance By 2013” and gives three bullets on the principles McCain would use do to that:
He gives many sub-bullets to each, but the most telling (to me) is this:
“In 1997, President Clinton and the GOP Congress agreed to balance the budget by restraining the growth in spending and cutting taxes over a ten-year period. With the same bipartisan effort today, with the federal budget that is now 70 percent larger, we could keep taxes low and still balance the budget by holding overall spending growth to 2.4 percent. Unlike Congress and the Executive branch in recent years, the McCain administration will enforce the spending restraint…”
The section where this is discussed is entitled “Restore Fiscal Discipline to Washington” and has the following bullets:
– Reinstate PAYGO Rules
– Reverse Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
– Cut Pork Barrel Spending
– Make Government Spending More Accountable and Efficient
Obama also gives sub-bullets, and these caught my eye:
“Obama voted in 2005, 2006 and 2007 to reinstate pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) federal budget rules” and later on “In 2006, Obama voted against misguided Republican efforts to raise the statuatory debt limit at the same time the Republicans were pushing through massive debt-financed tax cuts for the wealthy”.
So there you have it – nothing concrete from either candidate, but I didn’t really expect to find anything concrete anyway.
PAYGO did make me curious, so I went to the Ultimate Authority Wikipedia (tongue in cheek, folks):
– PAYGO was first used in the “Budget Enforcement Act of 1990” (GH Bush, prez. Democratic Congress in 1990)
– PAYGO rules were in effect FY 1991 – FY 2002 and are widely seen as having assisted the US Congress in maintaining budget discipline.
– In 1998, with a budget surplus on hand, Congress began increasing discretionary spending above the statuatory limits with creative means. (Republican Congressional majority in 1998)
– In 2001 through 2006, discretionary spending was slowing removed from PAYGO scorecard (by year in billions: 90, 65, 127, 150, 142, 144) (Republican Congressional majority in those years)
– The PAYGO rules were allowed to lapse in the House (Wikipedia is not clear on exactly when)
– The PAYGO rules were reestablished in the House of Reps on 1/4/2007 (Democratic majority in 2007)
– Wikipedia is less clear on the current status in the Senate.
.
