Perhaps Dean Should've Been Talking About Edwards...

When he called Clark "a republican in sheep's clothing."

I've been poking around the democratic candidates' web sites, and I found this doozie*, at Edwards's site. It seems he wants to lay off ten percent of federal employees exclusive of the military and homeland security. I don't know how many people that is; I looked here:
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data but couldn't find the number.

Still, I imagine that we're talking about thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people whom Edwards has summarily deemed unnecessary (I found this under "healthcare fact sheet"-- I couldn't find it anywhere else at the site.).

Edwards does deserve credit for having run one of the more positive campaigns thus far, not having taken the kind of pot-shots that Kerry or Gephardt, for example, have taken at Dean. (And if we were talking about, say, George W. Bush-- he'd probably "pay" for it simply by either 1. not paying for it, like No Child Left Behind, or 2. Borrowing more money under the auspices of his Stealth Plan to Wreck Social Security...)

Nevertheless--although I still don't know whom I'll vote for when the Texas primary rolls around, but I cannot imagine voting for Edwards based on this.

verbiage as of 18 Jan 2004, 10pm Central Time:

*A RESPONSIBLE PLAN
While Edwards asks for responsibility from parents, he also believes government must be responsible. His plan will cover approximately 21 million Americans at a cost of about $53 billion per year. His cost-cutting measures will reduce federal health spending by roughly 3%, or $17 billion per year in wasted spending. He fully pays for his plan, and achieves deficit reduction, through savings steps he has already outlined. These include the following:

*Eliminating Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans;
*Cutting the federal workforce outside defense and homeland security by 10%; and
*Eliminating a range of subsidies for banks, life-insurers, millionaire farmers, and others.