Hillary Clinton and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are promising new domestic programs, tax cuts for the middle class and a return to balanced budgets. One problem: Their numbers don't add up.

The top candidates, Clinton, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, all propose more than $150 billion a year in tax breaks for middle- income earners and new federal spending on health care, energy and education. They also pledge "fiscal responsibility,'' a phrase Clinton used seven times during an Oct. 30 debate.

While vowing to rein in the alternative minimum tax, they won't say how they would fix the levy, which is set to raise $400 billion over five years, increasingly ensnaring the middle class. They also rely too much on rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy and overestimate savings from closing loopholes and improving health-care technology...

Exaggerated Claims

Experts say the campaigns also suffer from exaggerated claims of savings from making health care more efficient and reaping more revenue from closing tax loopholes, potentially adding billions more to a 2012 deficit. Clinton, 60, says her plan to modernize health systems would save $35 billion a year.

CBO Director Peter Orszag said a health-modernization plan of that kind would probably not achieve that much savings. "That would likely be substantially above anything you would see in a CBO score,'' he told reporters on Nov. 13, while not speaking specifically about Clinton's approach. ...

Pay-Go

"All the Democrats say they are supporters of pay-go,'' or rules that require offsets for new spending, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "If you support pay-go, you can't say that you are going to repeal the tax cuts after 2010 and use that savings for something else, because there are no tax cuts to repeal. This is a case of wanting to have it both ways. None of that is real money.''

Clinton campaign aides say they took a conservative approach to estimating savings from health-care programs and are comfortable with their figures; they also point out that the Bush tax cuts are part of the White House budget estimates and argue that makes them fair game for offsets. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link. Both Peter Orszag and Maya MacGuineas spoke at an event this week at New America Foundation.