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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (44488)	9/4/2008 1:23:07 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 224713

McCain said on May 12, "I can eliminate $100 billion of wasteful and earmark spending immediately--$35 billion in big spending bills in the last two years, and another $65 billion that has already been made a permanent part of the budget." First of all the suspiciously round $100 billion figure is largely a figment of the McCain campaign's imagination. Not a single independent budget expert would vouch for it. McCain's economics adviser says it is an extrapolation from various studies, including a 2006 study by the Congressional Research Service, which identifies a total of $52 billion in earmarks. However, much of this money is tied to items such as foreign aid to countries like Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, that McCain says he will not touch. Excluding those programs McCain has promised to preserve, the draconian slashing of earmark expenditures might save around $10 billion a year. But that is still a long way from the $100 billion that McCain says that he can identify "immediately."