The Budget According to McCain: Part I

So McCain's boast that he can save $100 billion "before you look at any agency of government" is flatly false. His economic adviser tells us that budget cuts cannot, "by definition," arise simply by eliminating earmarks. Instead, McCain's plan is to scrub $100 billion from the discretionary budget. And those cuts are not at all linked up to past earmark spending.

McCain's attempt to conflate earmark reform with budget cuts is a bit of logical sleight-of-hand (a formal logical fallacy that philosophers call an undistributed middle). McCain's argument is that:

1. The McCain economic plan will cut $100 billion of the discretionary budget.
2. Past and present earmarks account for $100 billion of the discretionary budget.
3. Therefore, the McCain economic plan will cut past and present earmarks.

The argument is seductive. But consider another argument that has exactly the same logical structure:

1. Clouds are white and fluffy.
2. Sheep are white and fluffy.
3. Therefore, clouds are sheep.

Sheep and clouds have some properties in common, but that doesn't mean that they are the same thing. Similarly, earmark cuts and budget cuts may add up to the same totals, but that doesn't mean that the budget cuts will be the result of earmark cuts.

Okay, So What Are We Cutting, Then?
The McCain campaign has been pretty vague about just what will be cut. Holtz-Eakin told us only that the cuts "will have to come from across-the-board review" of discretionary spending. Campaign spokesperson Brian Rogers told us that McCain is willing to cut defense spending on "expenditures not included in the Administration's budget or identified as a priority" to "conduct the War on Terror and defend our great nation." Indeed, McCain has pledged to overhaul the defense procurement process in order to eliminate wasteful spending.

But McCain specifically exempted military spending from his pledge to freeze increases in the discretionary budget, and he has called for increasing the total size of the military. So McCain's promises to reform the military procurement process and cut unnecessary spending don't mean saving money to fund tax cuts; it's more like taking the funds out of one defense budget pocket and putting them in another. We're all for spending efficiently, but getting more out of each dollar while spending even more of them is very different from saving money. It's a bit like a husband who tells his wife that he saved them hundreds of dollars because he bought a new plasma TV on sale.