Fiscal (Ir)Responsibility of the Presidential Candidates II
This morning's Washington Post's lead editorial, "Who'll Cover the Checks," confirms my point of last Tuesday -- all three presidential candidates have proposed far more spending increases and tax cuts than they would pay for and by roughly equal amounts of half a trillion dollars each. Elections are not won without overpromising. Next year, some of those promises will be kept, some will be put off until the future, some will fall by the wayside, and some deficit reduction will be added. One thing we can be sure of -- for the next few years, the deficit will go up.
As usual, the choice will be
As usual, the choice will be between candidates merely offering different flavor lolipops, but no one telling us the truth: that we need to take our medicine.
The blame lies not only with the politicians, but also with the media for not educating the public on our long-term fiscal imbalance and realistic alternatives (despite the countless hours they devote to covering the campaigns) and on the public itself for not proactively learning about this issue (since most people have heard enough to know that it's a sufficiently important issue to find out more about).
One of these days I hope someone will run as the truth-telling "Responsibility Candidate". Kind of what McCain was supposed to be, but clearly isn't. The last guy I recall resembling such a candidate was Paul "I'm not Santa Claus" Tsongas in 1992 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tsongas
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