Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign charged yesterday that President Bush’s enacted and proposed spending will carry a $6 trillion price tag in the next decade.
“As opposed to President Bush trying to claim he is fiscally responsible, he has really fiscally failed,” said Sen. Jon Corzine, New Jersey Democrat and a member of the Senate Budget Committee, whom the Kerry campaign tapped to defend its calculation of the spending figure.
“We think this report demonstrates that,” Mr. Corzine said.
Mr. Kerry’s campaign figured that extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for a decade will cost $2.2 trillion, enacting Mr. Bush’s proposed tax cuts will be $243 billion, and paying for new spending — including the prescription-drug program — will come to $887 billion.
The campaign also estimated that enacting some form of Social Security reform plan — though Mr. Bush hasn’t proposed one — would cost $1.4 trillion, and service on the increased debt would be $1.6 trillion.
Mr. Bush has been running ads accusing Mr. Kerry of frequently opposing tax cuts and of favoring a $900 billion tax increase, a figure based on calculations of how much it would cost to fund some of Mr. Kerry’s proposals.
After protesting the way the Bush campaign calculated the $900 billion number, the Kerry campaign is fighting back with its own calculations of Mr. Bush’s spending proposals.
“The Bush administration is not telling us in any shape or form how that $6 trillion is going to be paid for,” Mr. Corzine said. “Nothing Senator Kerry has talked about has he initiated without identifying how it would be paid for.”
But Mr. Bush’s campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, said Mr. Kerry has yet to produce a complete budget comparable to the document the president is required to produce each year.
He also said Mr. Kerry’s spending would have been even more profligate.
“In many of these cases, he is attacking the president for spending when in fact he either supported the proposal or supported even more expensive alternatives,” Mr. Mehlman said.
Mr. Mehlman also said Mr. Kerry showed his priorities when he equated tax cuts with spending in the analysis.
“Senator Kerry consistently mixes up in his discussion spending as tax cuts, and tax cuts as new government spending,” he said. “President Bush understands this is the people’s money, and when you reduce taxes, you’re not spending money in Washington, you’re returning money.”
To drive home the Bush-Kerry differences on fiscal responsibility, Kerry advisers say their candidate’s campaign-spending proposals always include how Mr. Kerry plans to pay for them. The senator intends that to mimic congressional budget rules that require any new spending or new tax cuts to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases.
Mr. Kerry is expected to produce an outline of how he will pay for his proposals later this week.
For example, Mr. Kerry now says because he will abide by those rules, he might have to cut back on his earlier support for universal preschool and expanding the national community-service program.
He already has proposed repealing the president’s income-tax cut for those who make more than $200,000 a year.
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