Closing Arguments: Obama

Summary
In the last few days, Obama has wrapped up his pitch to the electorate with some misleading claims we've heard before:

    * He continued to ask voters to believe he can pay for every dime of an ambitious health care plan and other spending proposals while cutting taxes for all but the most affluent. Budget experts say that's unlikely.

* He also kept up the drumbeat on a promise to end "tax breaks for sending jobs overseas," as though that could do much to keep jobs at home. Experts say it can't.

Analysis
The Obama-Biden campaign's closing arguments have included some oft-repeated but still unlikely promises. Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, served up some new misleading claims in the waning days of the campaign. We examine their final pitch to voters in another article, "Closing Arguments: McCain." Here we take one last look at Sen. Barack Obama's claims.

Obama's Promises
In a move not seen since Ross Perot in 1996, Obama offered his closing argument in a half-hour infomercial on Oct. 29. Among his more eye-opening statements was his claim to have "offered spending cuts above and beyond" the cost of his proposals. Obama is one-upping himself: When he accepted the Democratic nomination, Obama said that he would "pay for every dime" of his new programs with spending cuts. We called the claim misleading two months ago. It's no truer now. Independent budget experts say that Obama's proposals will increase the already swollen federal deficit substantially. (Article continued below...)

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget just revised its "Promises, Promises" guide, and now says Obama's tax and spending proposals – in the unlikely event that Congress enacted them unchanged –  would add anywhere between $262 billion and $316 billion to the federal deficit in 2013, the final year of the next president's first term. The CRFB has increased its estimate of the likely cost of Obama's health care plan and now figures it could cost anywhere from $52 billion to $106 billion per year when fully phased in. And since the Congressional Budget Office recently projected the deficit in 2013 to be $147 billion if no laws are changed, that would mean a tsunami of red ink. (For comparison, the U.S. just racked up a record $455 billion deficit in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.) And keep in mind, the CBO's projection was issued nearly two months ago and doesn't take into account passage of the $700 billion bailout package and worsening economy. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly 17 percent since the CBO's projection was issued.)

Obama himself concedes that he probably won't be able to fulfill his promises, at least not right away. He acknowledged on Sept. 30 that, in light of the financial crisis, "it is likely that some useful programs or policies that I've proposed on the campaign trail may need to be delayed." But that bow to fiscal reality didn't make it into his infomercial.

For the record, McCain's promises are hardly more realistic than Obama's. According to the CRFB, he'd increase the deficit by anywhere from $229 billion to $400 billion by 2013. And the Tax Policy Center, also a highly regarded nonpartisan organization full of expert number-crunchers, issued an updated estimate of the effects of both candidates' tax plans on Sept. 15, in which it said: