It's tough out there for a second tier candidate. In the course of trying to catch up via increased levels of pandering, Bill Richardson managed to discover a novel solution to the "Tax and Spend" label that has dogged Democrat candidates for some time: Spend and Spend!
In a brief piece titled "Money for schools, not for war," MSNBC reports that the long shot candidate, in a speech to the National Education Association, declared:
"We need to get out of Iraq, where precious lives and needed dollars have been wasted ...We could use these resources to improve our schools..."
Say what you will about his understanding of how the Federal Budget works, but at least he knew his target audience. The problem was that he had already spent the money - the same day!
Earlier that day, Richardson had called for universal health coverage, increased Medicare subsidies and boosted preventative medicine, to the tune of $100 + billion a year. And what's more, he declared he wouldn't have to raise taxes to do it. How, then, to finance the latest "Health care Crisis" panacea? Iraq funding of course!
The New Mexico governor said he could provide coverage to the 45 million uninsured without raising taxes. Instead, Richardson said preventive care would save the nation billions of dollars and additional money could be diverted from spending on the Iraq war.
Richardson, Dodd and others are doing their best to stay in the game, but when you're campaign promises start to contradict each other in the same day, you might be getting a little bit desperate to keep up.
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