I must've missed the straight talk part

Karen, you know I love you, but you're letting McCain get away with murder here. The lede:

As president, Republican John McCain says he would be ready to do "the hard things" to ensure that the U.S. government is held to the same budgetary standard as American families.

Okay, that sounds serious. So what's he going to do? Well, neither McCain nor the article tell us much. No specifics on how to put America on surer financial footing, except for this paragraph:

Keeping a balanced budget in the long term would mean reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, among other things, according to the campaign's economic plan.

Ack! McCain wants to balance the budget by "reforming" three pillars of the social safety net? What does "reform" mean? Cutting benefits? Raising the payroll taxes that finance them? Either way, that's your story!