{"id":517,"date":"2004-01-24T03:22:14","date_gmt":"2004-01-24T08:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/estimating_spending\/"},"modified":"2004-01-24T03:22:14","modified_gmt":"2004-01-24T08:22:14","slug":"estimating_spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/estimating_spending\/","title":{"rendered":"Estimating Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Taxpayers Union has conducted a study estimating the spending increases necessary to fund the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ntu.org\/main\/press.php?PressID=548&#038;org_name=NTUF\">Democratic presidential candidates&#8217; policy proposals<\/a>.<br \/>\nI wouldn&#8217;t put much stock in the study&#8217;s raw figures because estimating them entails two levels of speculation:  (1) some of the proposals are so vague it&#8217;s hard to figure out exactly what they call for; and (2) even if the policy requirements are explicit, it&#8217;s difficult to estimate their actual costs.  Just consider how well  the Bush administration has done in assembling reconstruction cost estimates for Iraq.<br \/>\nNonetheless the study might shed some light by showing how the candidates stack up relative to each other.  Here are the annual spending numbers it assigns (in billions):<br \/>\nSharpton  $1,327<br \/>\nKucinich  $1,060<br \/>\nKerry  $265<br \/>\nDean  $222<br \/>\nClark  $220<br \/>\nEdwards  $199<br \/>\nLieberman  $169<br \/>\nIf you exclude Sharpton and Kucinich, the range between the remaining candidates isn&#8217;t extremely large.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s further analysis for each contender at the  link above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/estimating_spending\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Estimating Spending\"><p>The National Taxpayers Union has conducted a study estimating the spending increases necessary to fund the Democratic presidential candidates&#8217; policy proposals. I wouldn&#8217;t put much stock in the study&#8217;s raw figures because estimating them entails two levels of speculation: (1) some of the proposals are so vague it&#8217;s hard to figure out exactly what they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}