The outspender.(The Week)

THIS may be the first presidential election in American history in which both major candidates suffer from severe fiscal dementia. Bush's record on controlling federal spending has been woeful, as has been pointed out in these pages time and again. One of John Kerry's best zingers during the three debates was when he quipped, "Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order."

It would be easy for Kerry to pivot to Bush's right on the issue of restoring fiscal sanity to Washington. But alas, the Massachusetts senator's record is even worse. In every year he has been in the Senate, Kerry has been rated an enemy of the taxpayer by the National Taxpayers Union; in his last twelve years, his grades from NTU were eleven Fs and one D. Last year alone, he sponsored $205 billion in new federal spending. The only programs he has ever wanted to cut have been those related to national security--e.g., the missile-defense system.

As president, Kerry would supersize the budgets of the very programs that are driving the federal government into bankruptcy. For each of the past five years, Medicare and Medicaid have grown by more than 50 percent. The director of the General Accounting Office recently warned that if health care and pension costs are not contained soon, within two decades the federal government will have to devote every penny it collects to sending out retirement checks to the elderly and paying for nursing-home costs, doctors, and hospital services.

On Social Security, Kerry proposes to do nothing, which amounts to ordering the Titanic to keep heading directly to the iceberg. Bush wants to steer clear by creating private accounts, which would dramatically reduce the future obligations of the program and thus cut the $8 trillion in unfunded liability over the next 30 years.

Kerry has two terrible ideas about health care. First, he wants to ...