McCain's radical tax cuts only mean more borrowed money and last time I checked, we have too much of that already. With more bailouts coming on the heels of Freddie/Fannie, there's only so much borrowing the US can afford. We all know that big talk about cutting spending is never, ever, never going to happen. It's always just talk and when they pull out the pen to cut, it's always too important to someone for a future vote. Heck, look at Palin and how much she sponged while governor of Alaska. If she's supposed to be a GOP example - taking ten times the per person money as Obama's home state - then it's obvious cutting will never happen to any significant degree.
Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.
"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.
"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."
McCain has said that he would offset his proposed cuts — including reducing the corporate tax rate and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax that has plagued middle-class families — by ending congressional pork-barrel spending, unnecessary government programs and overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
Democrats pounced on Greenspan's comments, in part because McCain professed last year that he was weaker on economics than foreign affairs and was reading Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," to educate himself.
"Obviously he needs to go back to that book and study it some more," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said during a conference call arranged by the campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama.
McCaskill said eliminating congressional earmark spending — estimated at $17 billion annually — cannot offset McCain's proposed tax cuts.
