Styles Similar in Bush and Kerry Duel on Deficit Numbers

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/politics/campaign/15deficit.html

Styles Similar in Bush and Kerry Duel on Deficit Numbers
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: August 15, 2004


ASHINGTON, Aug. 14 - <snip>While Mr. Kerry carefully listed ways he would pay for the new tax cuts, totaling $419 billion over 10 years, he has also called for permanently extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts for middle-income families. Because those tax cuts are set to expire under current law, making them permanent would cost the Treasury about $425 billion over 10 years.

Budget analysts see striking similarities in the ways Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush have glossed over major omissions in their goals to reduce the deficit.

Each candidate has promised to cut the deficit by half over the next four years, from its level this year of roughly $400 billion. And each has proposed major tax cuts without saying how he would pay for them. Each has also avoided the subject of the future costs of war in Iraq and the much bigger fiscal problems that lie just beyond their four-year horizon, when 76 million baby boomers begin to reach retirement age.

Nor has either candidate budgeted for changing the alternative minimum tax, which was originally created to prevent the wealthy from taking too much advantage of sophisticated tax breaks. <snip>