Fiorina joins other Republicans in failing to say how she would reduce spending

California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was unable to say what she would cut to reduce the national deficit during an interview on Sunday.

Fiorina joined a long and growing list of Republican incumbents and candidates who have said they were the better party to reduce the nation’s soaring deficits without giving specifics on how they would do so. She also joined several other Republicans who have called for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for all Americans including the wealthy despite the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reporting extending the cuts for everyone would add $4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace said he wanted specifics on which entitlement programs Fiorina would cut from, but she would not answer the question.

“So now, as a non-career politician, as the anti-Barbara Boxer, you tell me specifically what are you going to do to cut the billions, the trillions, of dollars in entitlements?” he asked.

Fiorina dodged the question by saying she did not support a value-added tax, but Wallace quickly interrupted her and asked her again what she would cut from entitlements. Fiorina accused Wallace of asking her a “political question” and simply said she would cut “waste.”

“What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table,” she said. “And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices. Instead of rushing off into a close room and having 100 senators figure it out for themselves, we need to engage people in the conversation.

“And I’m willing to consider any alternative. But we cannot continue to just jump over the fact that our government is bloated, wasteful, inefficient, in many cases inept and, frankly, in many cases as well corrupt. We have to deal with that.”

Apparently somebody forgot to tell Fiorina that President Barack Obama has appointed a bipartisan commission to look at all possible ways to reduce the deficit and he was expected to receive their report after the November elections. In fact, it was Republicans who rejected the idea of having the panel in the first place. Under Obama’s original idea, Congress would have created the commission and would have been forced to consider an up-or-down vote on the commission’s ideas. Instead, because of strong Republican opposition, Obama was forced to sign an executive order to make the commission to provide recommendations Congress and the president would consider but not have to enact if they did not want to.

When President Obama mentioned his plans to create the commission, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, “I’m not going to decide today what we’re going to do in the future,” and House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio suggested Republicans might not take their allotted seats on the commission. Two Republicans who even sponsored legislation with Democrats for a bipartisan budget commission, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, opposed the presidential commission – although to be fair, while the Senate failed to pass the plan because the majority of Republicans and a few Democrats voted against it, Gregg ended up voting for it, as did 16 other Republicans.

So once again Fiorina has shown that Democrats are putting forward ideas that Republicans would typically be in favor of, but because they want to see President Obama fail they will vote against the idea. The GOP will then spread lies and use fear tactics to make the American people think it was a bad idea. Then, when Democrats look like the party that is harming the country, the Republicans put forth the same idea the Democrats did and say “see, this is what we need to do” and start telling the truth about the benefits of it to make them look good.

Fiorina continually said in her interview if politicians reduced the waste, fraud and inefficiencies the deficit could be reduced, but when it came to entitlement programs all options should be put out on the table and discussed.

“I think we ought to ban earmarks,” she said. “I think we ought to give citizens the opportunity to designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax toward debt reduction. If we did that, we would reduce our debt by $95 billion a year.”

Wallace informed Fiorina that discretionary, non-defense spending was only 16 percent of the federal budget. He also pointed out that former President Ronald Reagan talked about eliminating the same waste, fraud and abuse Fiorina was talking about, but that it was not a successful way to control federal spending.

In fact, under Reagan the federal deficit increased and in his eight years in office, the United States went from being the world’s largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation, according to a Washington Post article. In January 1981 when Reagan declared the federal budget to be “out of control,” the deficit had reached almost $74 billion and the federal debt was $930 billion, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion, and by 1988 the deficit – although down a bit – was still higher than after his first year in office at $155.2 billion with the national debt totaling $2.6 trillion.           

Fiorina is running against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. The latest polls have her trailing Boxer. A Reuters/Ipsos poll has Fiorina trailing Boxer 45 percent to 46 percent while the latest Rasmussen Reports poll has her trailing Boxer 46 percent to 49 percent.

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