McCain Offers Plan to Cut $13 Billion From U.S. Budget

Parting with his Republican colleagues in Congress, presidential candidate John McCain rejected the GOP’s proposal for a 1% cut in the federal budget and offered his own plan Thursday to slash $13 billion of budget items--ranging from aircraft carriers to West Coast conservation programs.

Speaking in New Hampshire on Thursday, McCain criticized the GOP’s across-the-board cut as random and ineffective and said his proposal would preserve worthy programs. Like the congressional plan, which was vetoed Wednesday by President Clinton, McCain said his cuts would protect funding for Social Security and Medicare and provide enough money for tax cuts and debt reduction.

“We should have the courage to eliminate the pork-barreling and wasteful spending and not reduce vital programs such as Meals-on-Wheels,” McCain said in a telephone interview from New Hampshire. Taking another jab at the Republicans in Congress, the senator from Arizona added: “I know that [pork] has increased since the Republicans took over Congress” in 1994.

The elimination of wasteful government spending is a cornerstone of McCain’s presidential campaign. McCain has attacked special interest groups for “corrupting” Washington policymakers with campaign contributions and by lobbying for self-serving policies.

The issue has caught fire among voters in the crucial first primary state of New Hampshire, where McCain has dramatically eroded the once-hefty lead enjoyed by the Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

A poll of New Hampshire voters released Thursday showed that Bush’s lead has dwindled to 8%. Conducted by WNDS-TV and Franklin Pierce College, the poll said 38% of likely Republican voters back Bush and 30% support McCain. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

McCain’s proposed list of budget cuts, totaling 153 pages and headlined “Pork Barrel Spending,” was posted Thursday on his Web site (https://www.mccain2000.com). The list was compiled with the help of Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington watchdog organization.

“As president, I would cut every one of the projects on the following list,” McCain’s statement said. “For over a decade, I have been fighting to cut pork-barrel spending that wastes the taxpayers’ dollars on special-interest projects.”

Questioned in an interview about some of the specific cuts he proposed, McCain softened his stand. He said he included some items on the list that had not been properly evaluated by Congress and, if they were reconsidered with a more thorough review, he might support them.

“I’m not judging these projects on their merits,” he said. “I’m judging them on the way they were earmarked and put into the appropriations process without hearings or authorization.”

The 1% budget cut proposed by Congress would save about $5 billion.

McCain’s list contained about $6.4 billion in questionable expenditures for the military. Among the environmental programs listed as objectionable was $80 million for Pacific Salmon conservation.

But as one critic pointed out, pork is in the eye of the beholder.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) was incensed that McCain targeted $350,000 in federal spending for a project in Huntington Central Park that would test new technology designed to clean toxic soil left by a former firing range.

“This is a revolutionary technology that needs to be field-tested and we felt it deserved its chance,” he said.

If McCain’s attack on the clout of big money in Washington has boosted his bid in New Hampshire and incensed his own party, it has also pushed the issue to the forefront of the presidential debate.

Bush has not taken a position on the GOP’s proposed 1% budget cut, his aides said.

At the campaign for millionaire publisher Steve Forbes, Bill Dal Col, the campaign manager, said McCain’s budget proposal underscored the validity of Forbes’ proposal to exchange the current tax code for a 17% “flat tax.”

“There’s probably at least $13 billion in pork in the federal budget,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical that we have true dramatic tax reform to eliminate the loopholes that the lobbyists and special interests create that generate the pork.”