McCain – “the fundamentals of this economy are strong”

By Patrick Keegan

Filed Under Race for White House 2008 on Sep 17 

And of course just hours later he declared that our economy is in crisis.

Just which one is it Senator McCain?

The man who once basically declared himself rather ignorant on economic issues, now has flip-flopped in a matter of hours on the state of our economy. Combine that with Governor Princess, who ran Alaska on earmarks, and we’ll have ourselves a heck of a team trying to solve this nation’s economic woes.

Here’s a challenge to the right-wingers on here who do nothing but pontificate about their hatred for Obama: show me how McCain/Palin are going to be any different than the fiscial irresponsiblity of the current administration.

Post something substantive and positive about John McCain and his proposals instead of doing what a lot of Republicans seem to do well – attack the other side instead of defending their own.

Comments

  • Patrick Keegan

    Thank you to Eddio and Whodat, who I expected to give good, solid actual answers. I respect your answers, agree with some of it, disagree with some, but its reasonable.

    Alaina has proven that she, once again, can’t do much more than attack Obama.

    • Alaina Segovia

      And where was my attack on Obama?

      Other than mentioning him in your hyprocrisy, where exactly did I attack Obama?

      • Patrick Keegan

        Oh sorry, attack on me then. It’s still an attack, not an answer.

        Alaina, I’m just trying to make a point that all it seems you (and not just you, there are many others) do is attack Obama instead of saying something substantive about McCain.

        Can’t you do something besides be negative is all I’m asking?

  • Alaina Segovia

    Patrick, I started to respond to your post, but I had too much to say so consider my post a rebuttal.

    In addition to my post, I have a few other non-economy rebuttals to add.

    First, Gov. Princess ran Alaska on earmarks? That shows your lack of understanding of how some states must function versus others. Some states that have a large population like Texas, California, Flordia, and New York, can easily raise their own revenues and don’t need earmarks. Other states, Alaska included, who aren’t as populous as others have to have earmarks to function. Alaska has the largest land mass of all the states in the union. How much do you think it costs them just to keep their roads in decent shape in a state that size? With only 600,000 residents, they can’t rely solely on taxes and other state genereated revenues to keep the state functioning.

    It’s pretty hypocritical of you to say, “Post something substantive and positive about John McCain and his proposals instead of doing what a lot of Republicans seem to do well – attack the other side instead of defending their own.” Is that not what your entire post was about?” Nope, not at all. That was quite a post about Obama and thanks for refraining from attacking McCain.

    • Patrick Keegan

      Alaina, the McCain/Palin ticket is campaigning as the anti-pork team, yet the ‘net is littered with stories about her and earmarks – and not just ones for infrastructure.

      Some of Palin’s requests were for science research, such as $499,900 to assess halibut harvesting; others for lighting village airports in the Alaskan bush, where small planes and gravel runways may be the primary link to the outside world.

      Here’s just a few things -

      Palin’s requests to Congress came at a time of huge federal deficits, while Alaska state revenue was soaring due to rising oil prices and a major tax increase on oil production that Palin signed into law in late 2007.

      As a result, Alaska this year was in such a money-flushed condition — with no state income tax or sales tax and total state revenues of $10 billion, double the previous year’s — that Palin gained legislative approval for $1,200 cash payments to every Alaskan.

      In addition, each Alaska resident gets an annual dividend check, about $2,000 this year, from Alaska’s oil-wealth savings account, known as the Permanent Fund, now fattened to more than $35 billion.

      The state also has been able to tap into a gusher of federal money as its Republican congressional delegation rose in seniority and clout.

      In 1996, when Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 8,000 some 40 miles north of Anchorage, she did not take part in the earmark process.

      But by 2000, into her second term, the city had hired a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, Steven Silver, a former aide to Stevens, then the ultimate rainmaker as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

      So I’ll ask you, once again, to defend the McCain economic position instead of giving non-answers.

  • Red State Eddio

    You assume that to say both things is 1) wrong, and 2) impossible to say and be consistent in your position. I challenge that your premise is wrong and untenable.

    (Correst answers are provided in parentheses to help you keep up with the speed of intellectual development)

    1. Is it possible, Patrick, to have a meltdown in the financial sector and still have a relatively intact market everywhere else? (yes)

    2. Are we talking about ALL sectors reporting sell-offs, write offs, bankruptcies, desperation-style mergers in areas like food, tech, manufacturing, healthcare, etc, etc, etc? (no)

    3. Or is that primarily just the financials? (yes)

    4. If so, wouldn’t that indicate that the fundamentals throughout the rest of the market are relatively OK while one area is in cardiac arrest? (yes)

    5. If so, would both McCain’s statements be…true? (gasp…yes)

    6. At the same time? (heaven help me…yes)

    Hmmmm…and for the sheer fun of it, here’s Mac’s economic info right off his own website in case you discover this really cool thing called the internet and a mouse where through a couple of clicks takes you to far away lands like http://www.johnmccain.com where you can get all the info you want. :-)

    A. Bring The Budget To Balance By 2013

    1. The near-term path to balance is built on three principles:

    a) Reasonable economic growth.
    b) Comprehensive spending controls.
    c) Bi-partisanship in budget efforts.

    In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

    2. McCain Policies Will Support Reasonable Economic Growth: (Small business). Small business will benefit from:

    a) Low individual tax rates
    b) Access to capital from low tax rates on dividends and capital gains.
    c) Minimizing expensive mandates

    d) Enhancing international competitiveness to keep jobs here; not abroad.
    i) A lower corporate tax rate.
    ii) Improved investment and research incentives to ensure that workers have the most modern technology.
    iii) Bringing the budget to balance, reducing federal borrowing, and controlling spending to reduce the burden on the economy.

    3. Comprehensive Spending Controls:

    a) Reserve all savings from victory in Iraq and Afghanistan for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.
    b) one-year spending pause. Freeze non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending for a year and use those savings for deficit reduction.
    c) Take back earmark funds.

    4. Bi-partisan Fiscal Discipline: bipartisan spending restraint equivalent to that in the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement between a GOP Congress and a Democratic President; keep taxes low and still balance the budget by holding overall spending growth to 2.4 percent.

    a) perform a comprehensive review of all programs, projects and activities of the federal government, and then propose a plan to modernize, streamline, consolidate, reprioritize and, where needed, terminate individual programs.

    b) review all special spending provisions to end subsidies to high-income individuals and corporations

    B. Eliminating Wasteful Spending
    Stop Earmarks, Pork-Barrel Spending, And Waste:

    1. veto every pork-laden spending bill and make their authors famous. Seek the line-item veto to reduce waste and eliminate earmarks that have led to corruption.

    2. Reducing spending means making choices.
    a) Eliminate broken government programs.

    b) Reform our civil service system to promote accountability and good performance in our federal workforce.
    c) Reform procurement programs and cut wasteful spending in defense and non-defense programs.

    C. Reforming Entitlement Programs For The 21st Century
    Reform Social Security: John McCain will fight to save the future of Social Security, and he believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes.

    1. Supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts – but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept.

    2. Control Medicare Growth.

    Hey, you asked…

    • kristen

      Wow. You did your homework. Awesome.

      And amen to everything you said, as well as what was stated above. ;-)

    • Patrick Keegan

      Thank you for answering the challenge Eddio.

      The biggest issue I see is the fact the tax cuts McCain is proposing would cut revenues far more than his proposed spending cuts would save. How can he promise to balance the budget (something that only Bill Clinton has done in the last 30+ years), by 2013?

      No less an expert than Alan Greenspan has said the nation cannot afford tax cuts of that magnitude.

      Even if McCain actually can successfully get every penny of pork out of legislation (which a lot of people have doubts he could), it will only save $17 billion. His proposed tax cuts are in the trillions!

      • Fabs

        I’m not sure if you’re looking at the tax cuts from more of an “accounting” perspective or not. With the right tax cuts, the reason they bring in more revenue is because there’s a nice multiplier effect. More people and businesses have more funds to do more things which drive more growth, etc. Tax breaks are far more effective beyond the short-term compared to small infusions like our Bush checks this year, because they continue from year to year.

        I’m sure you’re at least somewhat aware of this, so forgive me if I’m preaching to the choir.

  • JE

    Patrick,
    You sound angry. Please relax a tick.
    I actually agree with one point and that being that people need to quit bad mouthing the opponent, but that goes both ways. Please tell me what obama will DO about this situation and why you SUPPORT him as opposed to labeling his challenger’s running mate governor princess (havent any libs gotten tired of running against the VP candidate yet?). Yes i know he will hope and change…though if you have bought into that you might want to read this piece by Dennis Byrne:
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/obama_sidesteps_reform_in_illi.html

  • Whodat

    I am really sorry about hitting the send button twice. This does prove senility. It merely indicates enthusiasm.

  • Whodat

    Point One. Ours is a capitalist economy. Many of us believe it is already tied too closely to government, but it still has some independance. So, bottom line, much depends on the private sector, as well as, government. The Pres, whoever, is not King and cannot totally promise or control anything.

    2) We can assume that a community organizer, with reference points among the hapless, the homeless, the welfare queens and the street druggies would have an expertise in global economics?

    3) Many of us who can brag about our college education still cannot honestly brag about what we learned in two or three semesters of “economics”. It was an great place to meet chicks because none of them were interested in all those boring charts and stuff. In the business school at the University, we were forced to take eco, but not required to actually learn it – that’s for nerds. Who among us can say they are a master of economics?

    4) “If you placed all the economists in the world end-to-end, they still would not reach an agreement.” The classic economists yuk-yuk.

    I rest my case.

    Whodat say Wal-Mart stock is the best barometer of the economy

  • Whodat

    Point One. Ours is a capitalist economy. Many of us believe it is already tied too closely to government, but it still has some independance. So, bottom line, much depends on the private sector, as well as, government. The Pres, whoever, is not King and cannot totally promise or control anything.

    2) We can assume that a community organizer, with reference points among the hapless, the homeless, the welfare queens and the street druggies would have an expertise in global economics?

    3) Many of us who can brag about our college education still cannot honestly brag about what we learned in two or three semesters of “economics”. It was an great place to meet chicks because none of them were interested in all those boring charts and stuff. In the business school at the University, we were forced to take eco, but not required to actually learn it – that’s for nerds. Who among us can say they are a master of economics?

    4) “If you placed all the economists in the world end-to-end, they still would not reach an agreement.” The classic economists yuk-yuk.

    I rest my case.

    Whodat say Wal-Mart stock is the best barometer of the economy

  • B-Kooky

    McCain is not going to raise taxes in the middle of an economic downturn.

    McCain understands that decreased taxes leads to increased tax revenues.

    McCain understands that taxing small businesses is bad for economic progress.

    McCain understands that creating new entitlements and increased spending will not stimulate the economy.

    McCain realizes that the last 8 years has seen unprecedented growth and a lower unemployment rate than the Clinton years.

    McCain understands that giving tax cuts to people who don’t pay taxes is a not good policy.

    Simply put………..

    Mac knows that government can’t grow an economy, people can.