Fred Thompson shows his true colors

I've been trying to fathom why Thompson is such a favorite in the horse race for the presidential nomination and then it struck me. He hadn't put forward any substantive policy recommendations yet. People just like him because they recognize him from the TV and he seems like such a likeable guy. That may change after people read his piece at the WSJ's Opinion Journal but I wouldn't bet the family farm on it. Ezra Klein explains it all.

"Treasury statistics show that tax revenues have soared and the budget deficit has been shrinking faster than even the optimists projected," writes Thompson, or one of his aides. "Since the first tax cuts were passed, when I was in the Senate, the budget deficit has been cut in half...at this rate, the budget will be in surplus by 2010."

None of that, of course, is true. The budget deficit created by the tax cuts has eased, but you need only glance at this graph of the deficit to see the Republican record on red ink. See that plummeting line? That's when Thompson was in the Senate. And the administration's budget projections that Thompson is using assume that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will, come 2010, cost zero dollars, Medicare and Medicaid will endure $100 billion in cuts, SCHIP won't be fully funded, and the AMT will be preserved.

In other words, it's Bushenomics all the way. It's Reaganonics, as in ketchup should be counted as vegetable when assessing free lunch programs for the poor. It's the trickle down theory in a new set of clothes. It's digusting. But the scary part is, given the shallow nature of our presidential campaigns, he just might be elected president.

Libby Spencer