Gore didn't outline how he would pay for the programs he outlined today -- he said he would address "the specifics on my proposals and plans" in the next three weeks, and only after the new budget surplus numbers are confirmed. This aroused the wrath of legendary New York Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who confronted Rubin after the speech.

"Where does tha money for the uddah Social Security, ... the 'Social Security Plus,' come from?" Breslin asked.

Rubin said he would demur and "let the vice president provide the specifics."

Where's it gonna come from? Breslin asked. "The aiyah?" (The air.) Rubin said that he "would remind you that we have very large surpluses."

"That's, ahhhhh, you know," Breslin said. "What if the horse runs fourth five years from now?"

"That's the point," Rubin said. "Life is uncertain." Which is why the country needs Gore's "fiscally prudent program."

"If he's gonna propose it now, why don't he have it in the bank?" Breslin asked.

But Gore is seen by many as the more legitimate fiscal conservative in the race, believe it or not. This is because Bush has proposed a massive, $483 billion tax cut over five years (or $2 trillion over 10, as Gore likes to say). As Arizona Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was nice enough to point out during the GOP primaries, 60 percent of the cash in Bush's tax cut goes to the richest two percent of Americans.

Then, on top of all that, Bush has proposed a Social Security partial-privatization plan, which would cost nearly a trillion dollars, and a Star Wars-esque missile defense plan whose costs are almost impossible to estimate, but let's just say a lot.

Bush's tax cut proposal "will completely wipe out the budget surpluses," Rubin said after the event. "There won't be anything left for any other proposals. He'll have to resort to deficit spending."

Regardless of the fiscal responsibility of his proposals, however, Bush has attempted to use Gore's reputation for puffery to belittle the administration's role in jump-starting the economy. ("They didn't invent prosperity any more than they invented the Internet," Bush said time and time again on the stump.)

"Al Gore's 'I Invented Prosperity Tour' should recognize that hardworking Americans -- not government -- deserve credit for our nation's prosperous times," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer was quoted saying in a press release Monday. "The final destination of Al Gore's tour is Washington, D.C., because he believes it's the source of our current economic prosperity and the solution to the challenges facing the American people."

Gore made implicit slaps, too. Tucked into the body of his speech were all sorts of code words for what's at stake should Bush take over. Eliminating the national debt "is how we reach real maturity," he said, as if referring to some mysterious, less-mature individual, one possibly sitting in Kennebunkport this very minute, daydreaming about keggers at the DKE house..

And there were more blatant slap shots. His plan is "'Social Security Plus,' not 'Social Security Minus,'" he said, promising to "oppose any effort to make Social Security a gamble instead of a guarantee" -- like, for instance, with Bush's partial-privatization plan? "I am not going to let anyone take the 'security' out of Social Security."

"Here is what I will not do," Gore said halfway through his address. "I won't be profligate with your money. I won't spend money that we don't yet even have on a huge tax cut our economy can't afford, in ways that could end our prosperity and progress."

What if Bush took over and did his screwy baby-voodoo economics for one year but then realized his mistake? Gore had an answer for that, in case you were wondering: "Bad choices in a single year of a single budget could put prosperity beyond our reach again for a decade or more."

Promising he would fight for these principles, Gore concluded. "America has done well. But I'm here today to tell you: You ain't seen nothing yet." And, right on cue as with everything in Al Gore's carefully constructed, hermetically sealed world of rigidity, order and achievement, Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" began playing. Wheee!

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