John McCains Economic Plan

This week, both the Obama and McCain campaigns intend to focus on economic issues.  Politico has a feature today on Senator McCain's new promise to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term as President. 

Josh Marshall makes the first observation:

Now, the general routine is the face of this kind of candidate announcement is that journalists and economists look at the numbers to see if they add up. In most cases, the exercises generates fairly unsatisfying contradictory opinions, with some experts saying one thing and other experts another.

But here's the thing. McCain doesn't have any numbers. None. Not vague numbers of fuzzy math. He just says he's going to do it. Any other candidate would get laughed off the stage with that kind of nonsense or more likely reporters just wouldn't agree to give them a write up. But this is all over the place.

From Marc Ambinder:

Right now, based on what McCain and the campaign have said, McCain proposes more than $650 billion a year in tax cuts, which is equivalent to a third of domestic spending, and is offset by, first, $160 billion in unspecified domestic cuts. (Note: the McCain campaign disputes the premise that some of the tax cuts, like altering the way companies deduct expenses, would cost anything in the long-run so they don't provide off-sets for it.) The rest would come from economic growth after some sort of rapid sequence intubation of fresh optimism into the economy and large-scale reform of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. On a conference call today, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin hinted that the onus would be on Democrats to cooperate with McCain on entitlement reform, implying that if they don't, the Democratic Congress would be to blame for the deficit, not McCain. As the multi-partisan Center for Tax Policy concluded, "McCain's reduced individual and corporate rates could improve economic efficiency and increase domestic investment, but the larger future deficits would reduce and could completely offset any positive effect." Another problem is that McCain has not spelled out precisely what type of entitlement reform he would be open to, so we are left to guess. He hasn't, aside from some generalities, provided enough specifics as to federal programs he'd chop down; aside from oil and ethanol subsidies, we don't know how he'd cut corporate welfare or even how he defines corporate welfare. And then there's the war, the cost of reconfiguring DoD for new threats, etc. 

Senator McCain's economic proposals just don't add up.  Now, the Senator can get 300 conservative economists to provide an already footnoted recommendation of his proposal and scores of Republicans who would say nearly anything if they thought it would help Senator McCain's chances in the election, but the plan just falls apart with any reasonable examination.  

There are only two ways to balance the budget; reduce expenses or increase revenue.  John McCain apparently thinks there's a third way...

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

"When You Wish Upon A Star"

Music by Leigh Harline / Lyrics by Ned Washington