How did Candidate Obama "plan to pay for it?"

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2024

When's the last time anyone did? How competent are the mainstream journalists at the very top of the pile? A remark today in the New York Times called this question to mind.

Once again, the Times is offering a detailed "Political Memo" concerning Candidate Harris's interview style.  Under current circumstances, this strikes us as perhaps a bit strange all by itself, but we'll leave that topic for tomorrow. 

For now, consider the highlighted statement about Harris's "economic plan:"

POLITICAL MEMO
In Interviews, Kamala Harris Continues to Bob and Weave

[...]

Politicians, and presidents in particular, have long treated the ability to bob and weave through uncomfortable questions while remaining on message as a skill to be mastered, like the precise footing required of a carpenter navigating a high-pitched roof.

Bill Clinton’s famous line, “I feel your pain,” was deployed to diffuse an activist’s plea for details on how to end the AIDS epidemic. George W. Bush sabotaged questions about climate change by treating facts as partisan assertions. Barack Obama took his message to social media and largely avoided interviews with White House beat reporters.

This week, Ms. Harris put her own stamp on the art of the dodge.

On “60 Minutes,” she declined to answer a question about whether she considered Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, to be a close ally. She also refused to detail how she would pay for a $3 trillion economic plan.

Borrowing from Candidate Reagan, There [they] go again!

Question: Has Candidate Harris actually proposed "a $3 trillion economic plan?" We're not even sure what that's supposed to mean!

Clearly, that statement seems to refer to this question from Monday evening's 60 Minutes interview:

WHITAKER (10/7/24): It is estimated by the nonpartisan Committee for A Responsible Federal Budget that your economic plan would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. How are you going to pay for that?

That was Bill Whitaker's question. As we noted yesterday, we thought the question was strange. 

But even Whitaker didn't say that Harris had proposed "a $3 trillion economic plan." He said that (according to one estimate) she had proposed a plan which would increase "the federal deficit" by that amount over the next ten years.

No, those aren't the same thing! (For the record, Whitaker probably should have said that her plan, as assessed by that one org, would increase "federal deficits" by that amount, or would increase "the federal debt over what is currently projected.")

That said, is it true? Has Candidate Harris proposed "a $3 trillion economic plan?" We're not even sure what that means. 

Presumably, the federal spending her plan contemplates would vastly exceed that amount. So would the amount of federal revenue collected. 

How would we get from that to "a $3 trillion plan?" Also, just how literate are our mainstream journalists and orgs, even at the highest levels?

We'll move on to riddle you this question:

Question! When was the last time any major party nominee proposed to "pay for" his or her economic plan? Putting it another way, when was the last time any such nominee offered a plan which contemplated balanced budgets or budget surpluses over the course of ten years.

As we noted yesterday, all four major candidates in Campaign 2000—Gore and Bradley, Bush and McCain—contemplated budget surpluses over the course of ten years. 

At that time, the OMB and the CBO were projecting annual surpluses as far as the eye could see. Given that circumstance, everyone's budget plan contemplated reducing the national debt over the course of ten years. 

(Even after Candidate Bush's tax cut proposal, the budget authorities were still projecting surpluses.)

That said, the fiscal situation rapidly changed. Has anyone proposed balanced budgets, or budget surpluses, in any election since then?

As far as we know, no one has! Here's an account from the Washington Post which mentions Candidate Obama's budget proposals in each of his two campaigns:

Obama’s 2013 budget proposal launches election-year debate

[...]

The president's plan would push this year's deficit above current projections, with the budget gap growing to $1.33 trillion—slightly higher than last year's $1.3 trillion deficit and $200 billion more than congressional budget analysts recently projected for the fiscal year that ends in September.

The deficit would fall to $900 billion in 2013, and government borrowing would continue to slow through 2022, leaving the debt elevated by historic standards but no longer growing faster than the overall economy.

Senior administration officials said the blueprint offers a balanced approach that would protect the middle class while asking for greater sacrifice from the most fortunate. Every dollar in tax increases would be matched with $2.50 in spending cuts, they said, counting $1 trillion in previously adopted cuts to agency budgets.

Republicans immediately attacked the higher deficit figures, noting that Obama had failed to achieve his 2009 goal of cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

"Government borrowing would continue to slow," but federal deficits would not go away. Looking ahead, the president wasn't proposing to "pay for" his various spending plans, nor had he proposed doing so during his first campaign.

We don't mean this as a criticism of Obama! But as you can see, he never said that he would balance the budget or run surpluses. When it came to his budget plans, he never claimed that he would be able "to pay for it."

Suddenly, Bill Whitaker was wondering how Candidate Harris was planning "to pay for it!" As we noted yesterday, the answer is amazingly simple—she isn't proposing "to pay for it!" As far as we know, neither has any other nominee, R or D, in recent White House campaigns.

Whitaker seemed confused by the logic of this situation. Today's report in the Times is even worse.

We tend to assume that these people are sharp. Time and again, it almost seems that, on the rare occasion, they perhaps and possibly aren't!