Numbers Don't Add, Statements Don't Match, Nobody's Making Sense

Welcome to the McCain campaign.

After delivering an economic policy document with no numbers attached to it, the WaPo editorial board, in an unexpected burst of journalism, asked for some corroborating information, and found it wanting.

SEN. JOHN McCain says that President McCain would balance the federal budget by 2013. The plan is not credible.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $443 billion in 2013 if President Bush's tax cuts are extended, as Mr. McCain wants, and the alternative minimum tax is merely patched to make certain it does not hit growing numbers of taxpayers. But Mr. McCain is proposing far more tax cuts.

The McCain campaign says it will fill the hole with spending cuts. It would "reclaim billions" by rooting out existing earmarks and prohibiting new ones; impose a one-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for defense and veterans; and "reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations" to use toward deficit reduction. These claimed savings are illusory. The campaign assumes $150 billion in savings by cutting in half deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Congressional Budget Office says that even reducing troops to 30,000, far beyond Mr. McCain's estimate, would save just $55 billion in 2013 beyond the costs that the CBO projects as part of its deficit calculation. The campaign assumes an additional $160 billion in cuts to the Pentagon procurement budget and other discretionary spending. But eliminating every procurement program that the CBO has identified as a potential budget target would save perhaps $30 billion in 2013.

Republican primary voters don't ask for numbers to add up, they ask for all the tax cuts they want and a balanced budget and a pony. And McCain is their white knight on this front. He just makes up numbers and provides everything conservatives hope and dream for.

Speaking of dreams, McCain faced a far different audience yesterday than he previously faced in the primary, at the National Council of La Raza conference, and he up and lied about his support for the DREAM Act.

In the Q&A session following his prepared remarks, a young woman from the group One Dream 2009, asked John McCain, if he were president, to support the DREAM Act next year. McCain answered he would.

But that is not what John McCain told right-wing bloggers on an October 25, 2007 conference call. McCain emphasized that he has "said it a thousand times" that he "got the message" on immigration. However, don't take my word for it, ask conservative blogger Paul Mirengoff:

As for the Dream Act, McCain told us that he would have voted against cloture (i.e., in favor of preventing a vote) because he "got the message" this summer that Americans want the border secured before we "go on to the rest." McCain would deem parts of the border secure when the governor of the relevant state so certifies.

Since McCain is clearly on record as to how he would have voted on the Dream Act cloutre motion, and since his vote was not needed to prevent cloture, there seems to be no basis for criticizing his departure for Iowa prior to the vote.

These are just total panders. He wants to be all things to all people, and he keeps tripping himself up on the details.

And that's also true on Social Security, where McCain doesn't know the details of the program and is throwing around words like "privatization" to pacify the economic royalists in his party. Here, he is in for the fight of his life.

It was a spectacular flop: a president making dozens of fruitless trips around the country to build support for a plan his own party's leadership refused to accept.

But President Bush's failed push to privatize Social Security has not deterred John McCain from putting forward the same idea - and from risking a similar political disaster [...]

Democrats are gearing up to turn McCain's stand on Social Security, and his willingness to consider a privatization plan, into a key campaign issue. They say changing the program in that way would undermine retirees' benefits, and they hope to use the issue to harm the Arizona senator's support among a set of voters who tilt toward him -- seniors.

On Tuesday, a coalition of Democratic strategists, labor unions and liberal activist groups that helped defeat Bush's efforts in 2005 plans to launch a similar campaign. They intend to target McCain and dozens of GOP congressional candidates who have supported proposals to allow workers to divert some of their payroll taxes out of the Social Security system and into private investment accounts.

This feels like we're putting the band back together. There is no chance for McCain to survive if he is defined on Social Security - that's why I picked up on his remarks immediately. If Obama can cut into his numbers among seniors just a little bit on this issue, there's no credible path to victory. The signs that Obama is increasing his leads in Midwestern and Great Plains states, which are traditionally a little older, suggests that McCain is already meeting resistance among his core group. Time to wonk out on Social Security and pummel this guy.