George W. Bush's position on

Deficit Spending: The Congressional Budget Office projects that the US will add $1.9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. According to Peter Orzag, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies for the Brookings Institute, "Sustained budget deficits have damaging economic consequences," including reduced fiscal flexibility in event of disasters and increased risk of financial disarray. CBO link. Brookings Link. 

Description of candidate's position: Bush believes that because this is a time of war, he has been forced to increase spending for areas like Homeland Security and Defense, necessitating a budget deficit. However, Bush intends to cut the yearly federal budget deficit in half during his next term. To do so, Bush supports a Constitutional amendment giving the president the power to use a line-item veto "linked to deficit reduction" which would give him the power to override appropriations and spending. Most importantly, Bush plans to continue his President's Management Agenda (PMA), which improves the efficiency of the federal government by holding departments and bureaucrats accountable for their spending and controlling discretionary spending. Bush Link. PMA Link.

Quotation from the candidate: "Yes, we've got a deficit, for three reasons. One, there was a recession…Two, there is a deficit because I made the decision to go after the enemy, and we were going to spend whatever money was necessary to defend ourselves…Thirdly, part of the reason we have this deficit is because I believed in order to get the economy moving forward, there should be tax relief. And it's working, the tax relief is working…but the projected deficit of last February has already been decreased fairly significantly, because the economy is getting stronger. And when the economy strengthens, more revenues come in too." Speech Link.

Assessment of the proposal:

Positive: According to the Heritage Foundation, one of the world's most influential public policy institutes, President Bush is already taking positive steps to lower the deficit by "proposing to freeze most non-security discretionary spending at 2004 levels." Link.

Negative: According to the Cato Institute, a premier libertarian think tank, Bush's claim that the war has driven up the deficit rings untrue because "discretionary nondefense spending has risen almost as rapidly as defense spending in recent years." Furthermore, according to Leonard Burman, the Urban Institute's Co-Director of the Tax Policy Center, under either Bush's or Kerry's economic plan, "we're running huge deficits with no end in sight." Cato Link. Urban Link.

Comparison: Kerry also plans to cut the budget deficit in half in the next four years. To do so, he will return to the "pay as you go" budget rules of the 1990s, restrain discretionary spending to the caps of the 1990s, and cut "unnecessary corporate welfare." Link.

Link to Kerry's issue brief