Richard Whalen

Senator John McCain is planning a trip to Europe and the Middle East later this month. While this trip, that includes Iraq, might bolster his foreign policy experience image, it does little to assure Republicans and potential Independents that he understands the desperate seriousness of America’s economic and financial crisis.

On several occasions, Senator John McCain has even joked about his lack of economic expertise – “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well a I should,” he told The Boston Globe in December 2007. “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.” In my opinion, that is not much help.

A self-styled “foot soldier” in the Reagan Revolution, McCain worked in the House with supply-siders Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm. Once opposed to President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, he’s now for making them permanent – and for more cuts like them, with spending cuts to reduce deficits.

He urges elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and reduction in corporate taxes – now second highest in the world. McCain wants personal savings accounts to “supplement” Social Security. He urges “fundamental” reduction in deficit spending, starting with wasteful Pentagon procurement, such as $6 billion saved on Air Force tankers.

He calls for business deregulation and for a “cap-and-trade” system to combat global warming. Auctioning emission permits would generate money for ecological innovation and technology.

Reuters reports that “McCain would have a tough time cutting all of that spending because much of it would come out of the pentagon’s budget as the United States fights in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Joshua Gordon, senior Policy analyst at the Concord Coalition, a centrist budget watchdog group.

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says McCain’s proposals are…”the most fiscally irresponsible plans we’ve seen by a presidential candidate in a long time.”

McCain has not yet explained how he will rein in health care and retirement costs. “Any changes in spending and taxes will be dwarfed by the ballooning costs of the Social Security retirement and Medicare health-care entitlement programs,” says Brian Riedle, the lead budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

A former Democratic Senator who has known McCain and tried to work with him over the years expresses worry about his ability to grasp the complexities of our deflating, recession-hit economy, adding: “McCain is not the brightest bulb on the tree.”

Worry-worn voters are going to get it pretty fast – McCain’s proposals simply don’t fit the economic hell we are facing. When it don’t fit, it don’t fit.