Chip Taylor

Well, their lips are moving, aren't they?

Edmund Andrews reviews Bush's and Kerry's deficit-reduction plans and concludes:

Budget analysts see striking similarities in the ways Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush have glossed over major omissions in their goals to reduce the deficit.

Each candidate has promised to cut the deficit by half over the next four years, from its level this year of roughly $400 billion. And each has proposed major tax cuts without saying how he would pay for them. Each has also avoided the subject of the future costs of war in Iraq and the much bigger fiscal problems that lie just beyond their four-year horizon, when 76 million baby boomers begin to reach retirement age.

Nor has either candidate budgeted for changing the alternative minimum tax, which was originally created to prevent the wealthy from taking too much advantage of sophisticated tax breaks.

But the alternative minimum tax is not indexed to rising incomes and is expected to snare millions of middle-income families over the next few years. Both candidates have said they want to prevent that from happening. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that doing so could cost $549 billion over 10 years.

"It's unclear to me that either candidate is better," said Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group that has denounced the Bush administration's budget policies for years as reckless and misleading. "Both of them have the same goal, and both of them are avoiding many of the same issues."

According to the article, Bush's plan is to cut taxes further and freeze spending on 20% of the budget.

Kerry's plan is to raise taxes on some, cut taxes for others, and create a host of new spending programs, but to be a tax-cutter overall.

It seems like there are unasked questions for both candidates. For Bush, the questions are: Why have you decided to wait until your second term to deal with the deficit? In the next four years, what will be different from the last four that will let you do this?

For Kerry, the question is: Ok, that's what you want to do. Given that you will be dealing with a GOP-controlled Congress (in all likelihood) what do you really think you'll be able to do?