Tradeoffs? What tradeoffs?

Campbell Brown at CNN thinks the candidates need to be more forthcoming about how they’d pare back federal spending, now that we’ve plunked down $850 billion on the bailout.

“Cut out the bull, prioritize your goals, and tell us honestly what you’re going to do,” Brown writes.

“Well it’s simple, Campbell,” says Senator Joseph Biden. “I’ve just proposed $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan, which, by the way, has a standing order to shoot our troops on sight. But that’s not important right now. We’re going to have a bake sale. A very, very, very big bake sale. And then we’re going to charge about $849,999,990,000.00 on our Visa and leave the bill to our unborn children, who’ll have to learn scientific notation to express the sum of the debts they’ll inherit. Did I mention John McCain is George W. Bush? Hope and change. Obama ’08.”

“Well, Campbell. I like to think we’re going to work this out like Joe Six-Pack would,” says Governor Sarah Palin. “We’ll drill for oil, take out second mortgages on every U.S. government property that isn’t already in foreclosure, bomb a couple more countries in Asia, propose a healthcare plan you can’t make appealing in less than 30 seconds, and throw in a few gratuitous jabs at the mainstream media for good measure. You reporters were losers in high school; I was hot. We’re mavericks. Not Goose, Maverick. America first. McCain ’08.”