How much would all of these promises cost? Let's begin with the biggest proposal. The only existing score for the health plan was provided by Kenneth Thorpe, a former Clinton official and Emory University professor. He at first placed the cost of Mr. Kerry's health plan alone at about $1 trillion. Mr. Thorpe subsequently revised the figure downward to $653 billion to account for some rather mysterious "savings," apparently because the health plan's vague statements concerning prevention will yield miraculously precise lower expenses in later years.
The higher number is more reasonable. But starting with the lower number, the National Taxpayers' Union Foundation recently estimated that Mr. Kerry's proposals would increase government spending by $226 billion in his first year in office. That's about $2,000 per American family, or 10% of the federal budget. While the report did not include a 10-year score, the construction of one is hardly rocket science. My own calculations suggest that the total costs of Mr. Kerry's proposals would be at least $2 trillion from 2005 to 2014. On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 04:58:50PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: > I was wondering: what are "Kerry's wild eyed fiscal spending plans"? a chicken in > every pot, I hope, or at least pot in every chicken. > > ------------------------ > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of > > Carrol Cox > > Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 4:39 PM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hassett > > > > > > Michael Perelman wrote: > > > > > > Hassett of Dow -- not NASDAQ as I carelessly wrote earlier > > -- 36,000 fame also has an > > > outrageous column in the WSJ describing Kerry's wild eyed > > fiscal spending plans. > > > > > > > Aww, come on Michael. To be "outrageous" by WSJ op-ed > > standards it would > > have to Be Hermann Goering high on speed! > > > > Carrol > > -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
