Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, has always been known as an anti-spending crusader. It wasn't too surprising, then, to see him come out swinging when the Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating the effects of President Obama's new budget on the national debt.
The numbers are pretty easy to hate, after all -- a federal deficit of more than $1.8 trillion by the end of this year and deficits over the next decade that will end up coming out to $2.3 trillion more than the administration has estimated. It's a little odd, though, to see McCain adopt some of the language used by the kind of conservative Republicans who disdain him. That's what he did in a statement about the CBO report:
The Congressional Budget Office report proves that the Administration has indeed engaged in a policy of generational theft. The CBO numbers show the reality of the fundamentally flawed assumptions of the President's budget and make clear what it really is: a risky, debt-ridden threat to the Nation. The CBO's report projects deficits of over $2 trillion higher than what the White House predicted.
Hardly the solution for "constant partisan rancor" that McCain promised to deliver if he were elected president, right?
This sort of thing has been more common for the senator of late -- for more on it, see this article my colleague Mike Madden penned earlier this month, "Why is John McCain being such a jerk?"
Shares