Dean: Big Deficit Boosts GOP Plans

Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean accused Republicans on Thursday of running up the federal budget deficit so they can undermine the fiscal underpinnings of Medicare and Social Security.

I think their principal motivation is to undo the pillars of the New Deal, particularly Medicare and Social Security, by making the budget deficit so big that those programs can't be sustained," he said at a lunch with USA TODAY and the Gannett News Service.

In an economic plan he released Thursday, Dean made balancing the federal budget a top priority. He argued that fiscal discipline would help create jobs and restore cuts in government aid. But he didn't list specifics on how he'd balance the budget.

He reiterated his call to repeal all of President Bush's tax cuts and didn't offer future cuts for anyone. "We can't afford them," he said.

Democrat Walter Mondale's promise in 1984 to raise taxes torpedoed his presidential bid. "We'll be debating whether I'm going to raise taxes or restore fairness," Dean conceded.

Dean, the last major Democratic candidate to release an economic plan, proposed a two-year, $100 billion "Fund to Restore America" that he said would add more than 1 million jobs. Aid would be used by states and cities for homeland security and other needs.

Dean's Blog For America has more:

"What we're really about is not anger, it's hope.

"Is there some anger? Sure. There's a lot of anger at President Bush. The way President Bush has harmed us the most is not the 3 million jobs we've lost or the loss of face and loss of respect around the world, it's the loss of our sense of community. ... He's a very divisive president.

"This anger stuff is mostly about the spinmeisters in other campaigns who are shocked that we've raised three times as much money as they have. I think if there's any anger, it's probably in the other presidential campaigns for underestimating us. Do we say some angry things? Yep. Do we tap into anger? Yep. But what we're really tapping into is the desire to hope again."

"I think the president's philosophy is that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, you deserve it."