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More Evidence of John McCain's Naiveté on the Economy

John McCain has an economic plan for this country that could only be thought up in the mind of a Republican: somehow balance the budget while cutting taxes and continuing the war. That McCain's plan should strike any reasonable person as impossible is irrelevant: all McCain or any other Republican needs to do to brush those fears away is claim that cutting taxes generates money for the government in massive, fantastical ways.

But what's particularly dangerous about McCain is that he doesn't seem to understand his own voodoo economics.

When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan.

There was one thing he did not mention during his response: the deficit nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency, partly due to tax cuts and increases in military spending.

If you're going to pretend like supply-side economics work miracles, don't use the perfect counterexample as your example! You can read the full context of the episode, which happened at investment firm Bridgewater Associates, at the New York Times.

Comments

McCain is counting on enough voters being more concerned with symbolism (personal responsibility for taking out a loan you couldn't maintain) than substance (the effect that a neighbor's foreclosure has on home values of everyone else on the street, the town's tax base, etc.) on the economic front -- at least until November. But that very much depends on whether the economy has reached bottom (Which some are claiming right now. Unfortunately they are the same folks how told us that sub-prime was a small self-contained issue), or if the worst is yet to come.

The worse things get, the less credible his position becomes. Guess he didn't look at the number of foreclosures already in the pipeline for the rest of 2008...or doesn't care.

Posted by: Egalitare on 04/10/08 at 7:27 AM Respond

Jon, watch that word voodoo. Congolese Rice told McCain that she wants to be the VP. Then you really will see the voodoo put on Iran.

Posted by: Tina on 04/10/08 at 7:53 AM Respond

"Congolese Rice"? Is that some sort of a racial slur? I think her record of "accomplishments" in the Bush administration is bad enough- there's no need to bring her down with petty, pretentious plays on words...

Posted by: jo on 04/10/08 at 9:58 AM Respond

Booo Tina! You suck!

Look, he’s a Republican. These people think that Regan walked on water! When in doubt - WWRD.
Every time my neo-con friends bring up Ronnie, I ask them how deficit spending is a conservative value? They shut up at that point. The PR for Ronnie outweighs the reality. It’s crazy.
Clinton got lucky. He benefited from a productivity boom that he had nothing to do with. That lead to increased revenues and killed the deficit. You can go on and on about how he led the greatest growth ever, but that is all BS. Right place. Right time.
It’s the type of thing that happens every 50 years and the next few presidents will not even get a whiff of such a thing. We need Perot back to harp on about this and to do a slide show. It is time to bring the budget under control or suffer HUGE consequences.

Posted by: kirkbrew on 04/10/08 at 10:07 AM Respond

I agree with kirkbrew - bring back a Perot! I'm DYING for a candidate who respects Americans enough to show cold hard numbers and math about tax cuts, the costs of universal healthcare, where the budget is at, etc. Then we can make informed economic decisions based on facts!

Posted by: Jason on 04/10/08 at 8:03 PM Respond