What fiscal responsibility?

The WashPost has a “pox on both your houses” editorial today about how neither Bush nor Kerry have a strategy to reduce the deficit. But since Senator Splunge gave a “major speech” yesterday, he’s the focus of “Mr. Kerry’s Deficiency.” Long story short, the WashPost says that Kerry…um….lies.

Indeed, Mr. Kerry's assertion that he would cut the deficit in half in the next four years is flawed for many of the same reasons as Mr. Bush's analogous assertion. The four-year window is misleadingly narrow, because -- as with the president's -- the costs of Mr. Kerry's tax plan explode after that. Mr. Kerry's proposed changes in the current tax law would save about $25 billion through 2009 but would cost more than $640 billion over the full 10 years.

The same editorial notes: “Mr. Kerry says he'll do that [reduce the deficit] by going after corporate welfare, and he proposes a commission that would force Congress to take an up-or-down vote on wasteful programs it identifies.” Although he doesn’t show up very often, Kerry is still a member of Congress and has been for the past twenty years. Has he ever proposed legislation to address corporate “welfare” or singled out any programs that are wasteful? Didn’t think so.