"Kerry wants to spend a million gazillion dollars!"

Does anyone still believe anything Bush says on the subject of economics?  By now, anyone who has followed what the Bush administration puts out about economic and budget matters knows it's not exactly a gold-star source for information.  Hence, their accusations that Kerry wants to spend $1 trillion over the next ten years on new proposals are a tad suspect.

For the record, Bush's tax cuts, if made permanent, will run over $2 trillion over the next ten years.  Of course, to Bush, failing to change the law to make the tax cuts permanent amounts to a "tax increase".  Notwithstanding that bit of campaign dishonesty, leaving the law as it stands means we'll have $2 trillion more to use for programs people want.

One thing to keep in mind, when it comes to the Bush administration (and campaign), is that much of the information it puts out uses think-tank-type tricks.  In other words, it's quite possible that, in order to "calculate" that Kerry's proposals will cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years, they're ignoring the effects of inflation, assuming tax cuts don't expire as per current law, etc.  These tricks are designed to deceive, and the Bush administration has shown, over and over, an affinity for using them.  Remember the fiasco over their most recent budget, when others ran the numbers and found the Bush job predictions were ludicrous?

It's a smart policy, when it comes to these folks, to ask to see the numbers and then run the calculations yourself.  I would imagine that, on this issue as on so many others, truth and Bush are not close friends.

(Published also at the Diary of the Lying Socialist Weasels)