A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

SKEPTICISM ON MCCAIN PLAN TO BALANCE BUDGET BY 2013
(Robert Pear, New York Times)
The package of spending and tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain is unlikely to achieve his goal of balancing the federal budget by 2013, economists and fiscal experts said Monday... Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is proposing billions of dollars in tax cuts. But advisers to Mr. McCain said those costs would be more than offset by savings from slower growth in spending. In his proposal, Mr. McCain said he would hold overall spending growth to 2.4 percent a year. That is a tall order because federal spending has been growing an average of more than 6 percent a year in the last five years. Mr. McCain said he would also slow the growth of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and fiscal experts agree that he would need to do that to achieve his goal. But Mr. McCain did not give details of how he would alter those benefit programs, which have powerful constituencies, including older Americans, a huge health care industry and state and local government officials.

MORE: McCain Plan for Budget: Fiscal Hawks vs. Tax Foes (Michael Cooper, New York Times)
As Senator John McCain kicked off a week of economic-themed campaigning here on Monday, it was apparent that some of the underlying tensions between the two schools that guide his economic thinking — the supply-siders who want to cut taxes and the deficit hawks who want to balance the budget — remain unresolved... Fiscal analysts who have examined Mr. McCain’s plans say his calls to extend President Bush’s tax cuts and cut corporate and other taxes without calling for comparable spending cuts could increase the federal budget deficit significantly.

ADDING UP THE COST OF OBAMA'S AGENDA
(Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
In more than a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy. But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact. A variety of budget analysts are skeptical that the Democrat's agenda could survive in the face of large federal budget deficits and the difficulty of making good on his plan to raise new revenue by closing tax loopholes, ending the Iraq war and cutting spending that is deemed low-priority. Like predecessors who also had to square far-reaching promises with inescapable budget realities, they say, a President Obama might need to jettison pieces of Obama-ism.

INTERNAL POLITICS HEAT UP AT MCCAIN CAMPAIGN
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Senator John McCain’s campaigns have long been defined by internal squabbling and power plays, zigzagging lines of command and a penchant by the candidate for consulting with former advisers without alerting current ones, always a recipe for disquiet. After a period of relative calm on that score, it is becoming clear that his campaign is once again a swirl of competing spheres of influence, clusters of friends, consultants and media advisers who represent a matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds. The cast includes the surviving members of Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, led by Rick Davis and Mark Salter; a new camp out of the world of Karl Rove, led by the recently ascendant Steve Schmidt; and on the periphery, the ever-present Mike Murphy, Mr. McCain’s strategist in the 2000 presidential race who has been dispensing advice to the candidate to the annoyance of the other camps, and is the subject of intensifying rumors in Republican circles that he is about to re-enter the campaign. 

MORE: Questions Arise on Return of a Key Aide to McCain Campaign (Josh Gerstein, New York Sun)
A political strategist who steered Senator McCain's upstart bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, Michael Murphy, may soon take a prominent role on Mr. McCain's campaign for the White House, though even some advocates of Mr. Murphy's return aren't sure how or whether such a move would work. Republican operatives who asked not to be named said Mr. Murphy, 46, had offered to work for Mr. McCain. However, the sources said it was unclear how much authority the message crafter and advertising guru would be offered and whether it would be enough for him to accept a role.

PUMP PRICES HURT AMERICANS NOT JUST IN POCKETBOOK
(Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal)
Both presidential candidates are focusing on the economy this week, and for good reason: $4-a-gallon gasoline has Americans sliding into pocketbook shock. But pain at the pump is only one reason energy now should be the central issue of this year's campaign. Here's the other, more insidious one: High oil prices are shredding America's financial independence and producing a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. pocketbooks into the hands of suspect actors around the world, including Iran, Venezuela and Russia... To their credit, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are trying to raise awareness of the corrosive national-security effects of oil prices... But the country is a long way from consensus on what to do. When the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked Americans a few weeks ago what should be done to address the rise in energy prices, it found the country split down the middle between steps to increase domestic oil production and steps to conserve and develop alternative energy sources. The challenge of the campaign -- and of the next president -- is to start finding common ground on what is now a genuine national-security problem.

CLINTON'S CONVENTION ROLE BEING NEGOTIATED
(June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal)
Hillary Clinton won a hefty 1,600 convention delegates in six months of primaries. A big question now is whether to let them vote at the Democratic convention. High on the list of matters that Sen. Clinton and likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama are negotiating as her campaign closes down is whether and how her name is put into nomination at the August convention in Denver, said party activists in both camps. A full roll-call vote that reminds everyone how close she came to being the nominee could reveal party rifts going into the fall campaign, they said. But keeping her name off the roll call could anger her supporters.

MORE: Clinton Wields Powerful Email List (Ben Smith, Politico)
Hillary  Rodham Clinton folded her campaign’s tent last month, shedding spokespeople, fundraisers, lawyers, and advance men and women by the dozen. But two senior aides remain: Katie Dowd, who runs Clinton’s website and e-mail list, and Peter Daou, her campaign liaison to the blogosphere. The survival of Clinton’s online operation highlights her induction into a small but growing new club of presidential losers who have used the Internet to maintain some of their national profile and power. The defeated candidates use e-mail, websites and social networks to maintain contact with their supporters through legacy online campaigns that keep their coffers full, their bases intact and their political futures viable.

CANDIDATES DIVERGE ON HOW TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY
(Perry Bacon, Jr., Washington Post)
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are both proposing dramatic changes to Social Security, taking on the financially fragile "third rail of American politics" that Congress and recent presidents have been unable to repair. McCain's aides said he favors a bipartisan approach and is open to working with Congress on finding a solution to the long-term solvency of the New Deal-era program, indicating he could support an array of ideas such as raising the retirement age, reducing scheduled increases in benefits and allowing younger workers to put money they currently pay for Social Security taxes into personal savings accounts. President Bush floated a similar idea for private accounts in 2005, but polls found it had little public support. Obama has been even more specific. The Democrat from Illinois has proposed raising taxes on upper-income Americans to address projected shortfalls in Social Security, but his plan has been greeted with skepticism, even from some in his own party.

TIME FOR A BOB BARR REALITY CHECK
(Steve Kornacki, New York Observer)
I’m noticing a pattern here: Some outfit conducts a poll, throws Bob Barr’s name into the mix, and reports back that the former Georgia Congressman and current Libertarian presidential nominee is scoring somewhere in the mid-single digits. Then, a bunch of news outlets run the same basic story about how Barr is poised to play the spoiler this year. Here are three such stories just from the past few days. Believe me, there are – and will be – plenty of others. Maybe we need some perspective here. Yes, it is theoretically possible that this election will come down to a handful of votes in one state, in which case the support that Barr receives – or that any other third party candidate receives, for that matter – could theoretically swing the election. But it is highly, highly unlikely that Barr will be a consequential player this fall for numerous reasons.