Richard Whalen

Senator John McCain has talked straight on at least one issue – the economy – which just happens to be the most important issue in this year’s election campaign. As we have reported, 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 as I should,” he told the Boston Globe in December 2007.

His chief economic adviser, former Princeton University professor Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who once headed the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), is intelligent and articulate but, in my opinion, totally uninspired. Judging from interviews (New York Times) and an article written by Laura Meckler in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal about McCain’s economic proposals unveiled last week in a speech in Pittsburgh, the presumptive Republican nominee simply does not get the challenge posed by potentially the most far-reaching U.S. economic crisis since World War II.

Meckler writes: “Senator John McCain is proposing tax cuts that would either cause the federal deficit to explode or would require unprecedented spending cuts equal to one-third of Federal spending on domestic programs…. he proposes more than $650 billion in tax cuts a year, much of it benefiting corporations and upper income families. That includes the cost of extending tax cuts implemented under President Bush that he voted against twice.”

Now here’s the good part – got your calculators ready? McCain’s proposes a cut of $160 billion a year from a federal discretionary budget that totals a little more than $1 trillion. Most if not all of these cuts would have to come from domestic programs, Meckler points out. But at the same time, with the military spending about half the $160 billion total -- he also wants to increase the size of the military! Remember after a questioner told McCain that President Bush had talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years, McCain responded: "Make it a hundred!"

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. McCain’s $160 billion figure is equal to the total budget in 2007 for the Departments of Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice and State. The chances of cuts of this magnitude are “nonexistent” says Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition. “Those are very, very deep cuts.”

But hold on, now Holtz-Eakin is talking fast and saying that it is a mistake that people are making McCain’s speech a finished piece of work when it is only April and McCain has until November to unveil his total economic program. I just can’t wait for those numbers.

But I am thinking about Hillary Clinton asking everyone to think and I am thinking that when you add up McCain’s present numbers, you have got to be thinking that this guy doesn’t have a clue what he would do to our nation’s financial system. Whatever, John McCain has never had to spend a day worrying about his pay days – he has never been off the U.S. government’s payroll. How’s that for experience to lead our country out of a recession?

And for those voters out there who may be becoming rather negative to both Clinton and Obama and are talking about perhaps voting for McCain, I would caution them to think again.