Memo to Mr. Hoffman: More, please

Doug Hoffman hit the campaign trail Monday with a message that conservative voters have embraced for decades: We need lower taxes and smaller government.

On his website, Mr. Hoffman quotes Ronald Reagan: “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.”

The problem for the Conservative candidate is that he declines to name a single substantive cut that he would make to the Federal budget.

His proposed solution: “I would cut the pork and wasteful earmarks.”

Mr. Hoffman is a widely respected accountant. He knows how to read a spread-sheet. He understands better than most of us that pork projects account for 1-2% of all Federal spending.

If you magically eliminated every single wasteful earmark, you wouldn’t change the game at all.

Balancing America’s budget will require deep and painful cuts to everything from Social Security to the Pentagon — especially if we aim to get there, as Mr. Hoffman proposes, without raising taxes.

Mr. Hoffman’s argument grows even more tenuous when he talks about the North Country, a region deeply dependent on state and Federal subsidies.

We are a “net drain” on the treasuries in Albany and Washington, meaning we pay far less in taxes than we receive in spending.

But Mr. Hoffman declined to mention a single significant sacrifice that our communities would need to make to help bring down the state or Federal deficits.

Obviously, it is politically unpopular to talk about belt-tightening and more individual responsibility — that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in.

But Mr. Hoffman argues that he is a serious and principled fiscal conservative, contrasting himself with Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava.

To claim that mantle, he needs to offer more straight talk and more substance.