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Even with that generous accounting, the Kerry spending promises add up to an extraordinary amount of money. Our best estimate is that Kerry's proposals will add up to between $2 trillion and $2.1 trillion over the next ten years. Since the revenue from his tax proposals relative to the current baseline is actually negative, this implies that the Kerry proposal would increase the deficit by perhaps as much as $2.5 trillion over the next ten years.
On August 3, 2004, the Kerry campaign responded to criticisms such as this with a revised budget plan. The main difference between the first and second plans is that the campaign now claims to be able to save about $300 billion from eliminating corporate welfare. Even if we include this rather implausible savings in our estimate, the net increase in the deficit associated with Kerry's proposals is on the order of $2.2 trillion.
What would he spend the money on? According to our analysis, roughly half of this additional spending is attributable to Senator Kerry's health care proposals that would add more than $900 billion in federal outlays. Education expenditure accounts for nearly one quarter of Kerry's new spending, with almost $500 billion added over ten years. A $400 billion expansion of military personnel and benefits for veterans comprises most of the remainder of Kerry's spending plans, with the balance distributed among numerous social programs and increases in international aid.
While making all of these promises, Kerry and his surrogates repeatedly have made the claim that they will restore fiscal discipline if elected. They have also promised to adopt a "pay as you go" rule that will guarantee deficit reductions. But they do this at the same time that they promise voters the moon and the stars. It is time for them to state exactly which of Senator Kerry's promises are no longer valid, or stop all of the warm and fuzzy embraces of deficit reduction. They cannot have it both ways. Our just-released paper has highly specific scores for each of his proposals. Perhaps the Kerry team can tell us which ones are incorrect.
That will not happen for two reasons. First, the numbers are correct. Second, the media appear uninterested in the substance of his proposals, or the fact that they are catastrophically inconsistent. Perhaps, now that both the spending and tax sides have been carefully scrutinized by outside economists, the substance will begin to seep into the popular discourse. If it does, Kerry will have some explaining to do.
Kevin Hassett recently wrote "Kerry and Me" for TCS.
