Word: kasich
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Then there is the old blue-smoke-and-mirrors problem. To be sure, there are magic tricks in Clinton's plan too. For example, the President claims $15 billion-plus to be saved over five years in unspecified work-force and administrative cost reductions. But Kasich claims to save more than $70 billion by cutting "bureaucracy" and "overhead." Exactly how, pray tell? Says the Kasich plan, piously: "It is not the role of Congress to micromanage the administrative functions of Executive Branch agencies." Oh, that explains...
Keep in mind that these huge but unspecified bureaucratic savings are supposedly after programs identified as "wasteful" have been eliminated or cut. Other Kasich "cuts," such as $6.8 billion in sewage-treatment grants, simply transfer costs to state and local governments, which will have to raise taxes or increase their own deficits to cover them...
...Kasich plan eliminates all the new spending proposed by Clinton, including items Republicans claim to be for -- or at least lack the guts to say they're against, such as more money for vaccinating children. Do Republicans now oppose the increases in infrastructure spending (fixing our crumbling roads and bridges) scheduled by President Bush, which Clinton would keep and Kasich would cut? Are they now against increasing the earned-income tax credit -- a tax break for the working poor they have long claimed to favor? Do they really wish to go on record opposing expansion of Head Start (which reaches...
...Kasich brags about raising Medicare premiums for folks with incomes over $100,000. Hot stuff -- about $7 billion. Not so prominently advertised is almost $19 billion in increased costs to Medicare patients of all income levels for lab tests and the use of nursing homes. To put that number in perspective, Clinton proposes to raise $21 billion by reducing the Social Security exclusion from the income tax -- only for incomes over $32,000 a couple -- and the Republicans tar that as an unbearable burden on the elderly. And how about this half-a-billion dollar cut I see in prison...
...there, in the contrast between these two budgets, even the germ of a legitimate debate about the proper role of government in our society? Well, yes. Kasich grasps a few nettles Clinton avoids for fear of offending Democratic interest groups. For example, he gets $6.2 billion from limiting the Davis-Bacon Act, which is beloved by unions because it inflates wages on federal construction contracts. On the other hand, he is no more courageous than Clinton in taking on America's ludicrous farm subsidies. Could that be because farmers tend to vote Republican...