Republican "pledge" is a fraud

The Republican so-called "Pledge" contains no credible plan to reduce this debt. On the contrary, it would increase the debt by $4 trillion -- yes, trillion -- by extending all the expiring Bush tax cuts and adding new ones, including a poorly conceived deduction for small businesses. Talk about picking winners and losers; the tax code is already laden with special benefits for small business. This latest deduction would cost $25 billion over two years.

It shirks the politically sensitive task of explaining where the savings would come from. It tosses out a few, relatively small-dollar ideas -- "cutting Congress' budget" and "imposing a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees," saving $35 billion over 10 years -- and then resorts to the old waste, fraud and abuse dodge.

The biggest dodge of all involves entitlement spending. The Republicans would repeal the Obama health-care plan, a plan that at least holds out the prospect of slowing the growth of health-care spending in general and Medicare in particular