Res Publica 2005

Via Free Republic:

In an internal Senate report obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, the Senate Budget Committee (SBC) rips Sen. John Kerry's various policy proposals, showing those proposals to be far from fiscally sound.

The report (titled "Budget Impact of Policy Proposals advocated by Presidential candidate U.S. Senator John Kerry") was "prepared at the request of U.S. Sen. Don Nickles [R.-Okla.], Chairman of the Committee on the Budget" and "solely for the information and use of the Chairman, members of the Senate Budget Committee, and members of the full Senate." However, HUMAN EVENTS was able to get an exclusive copy and found that it lays waste to Kerry's claims of fiscal responsibility surrounding his various policy plans.

Below are some of the internal report's key findings:

Taxes:

• Senator Kerry has endorsed the continuation of nearly $700 billion of the same tax relief first prorposed by President Bush in 2001, and has proposed $472 billion in new tax increases and $373 billion in other tax cuts. On net, Senator Kerry's tax policies would reduce revenues by nearly $600 billion over ten years compared to the adjusted CBO baseline.

• Senator Kerry cannot rely upon his tax increase on upper income individuals to pay for his new spending initiatives because his tax increases cannot even pay for all the tax cuts he is proposing.

Spending:

• Senator Kerry's proposals would increase federal spending for every man, woman, and child in the country from $8,038 in 2004 to $13,200 in 2014.

• Total federal spending would increase by nearly $3.5 trillion over ten years compared to the adjusted CBO baseline.

Deficits & Debt:

• Senator Kerry has promised to cut the deficit in half during his first term; however, our analysis finds that his proposals would increase the deficit from $422 billion in 2004 to $464 billion at the end of his first term and $598 billion at the end of ten years.

• If every one of Senator Kerry's proposals were enacted and maintained, after ten years the national debt would be $4.9 trillion higher than it is today.

The report goes on to point out the many ways Sen. Kerry's proposals fall far short of his claims of fiscal responsibility.

Interestingly, the report states that the "SBC majority staff found that many of Senator Kerry's polity proposals did not have enough details to provide a reliable cost estimate for this report. Consequently, the costs of those proposals are not reflected in the totals." In other words, the news about Kerry's tax-and-spend plans only gets worse.

Check out the entire Internal Senate Report here.