You obviously are discounting the transformative powers of Baby Jesus®.

Steve he was talking about balancing the budget, not eliminating the deficit. I don't think he can do that either, but it's not the same thing.

McCain's mission in last night's debate was to prove to the right-wing extremist dittohead base that he is every bit as much a vicious lying thug as Sarah Palin. And in this, he succeeded.

"this kind of job creation of energy independence."

McCain and Palin have become the Masters of Incoherence.

As we know -- McCain is now entering -- as Palin stated -- the :

"We've got nothing to lose" part of their campaign.

In game theory -- you never want to play a game of Chicken with a psychopath -- they don't care if they die.

McCain's campaign doesn't care if McCain goes down in flames -- he already lost this campaign. So among other insane acts:

1) paint Obama as a terrorist -- while maintaining you are running an "honorable" campaign, AND accusing Obama of running a dirty campaign... ???

2) promise the world -- more jobs, more war, more tax cuts... and a balanced budget. Also, every woman will have choice and Roe v. Wade will be overturned.

3) Be the candidate for change AND uphold all base conservative principles.

4) Be all for new regulations on Wall Street and free market smaller government deregulation

You can just ignore the contradictions. Racists, hard-core conservatives and stupid people aren't bothered by facts and this is their target voter. You can go after the stupid vote because stupid is out there in numbers. They can say anything and say the opposite the next day and they will.

Obama should just run an ignore on McCain -- don't respond to any of it. Stop saying his name. "My opponent" doesn't understand-- he should throw that line back at McCain -- and then talk about Obama plans.

Race is over but the insanity should pick up.

Steve he was talking about balancing the budget, not eliminating the deficit.

What's the difference?

Sure, and McCain *sounds* even worse because of careless misframings like "I can bring them in that direction by eliminating spending" - well, I'm sure he meant spending increases, or whatever, but it sounds like he's not focused. Also, McCain and other conservatives don't understand the crucial idea (ironcially also fundamental to private enterprise!) that judicious spending actually saves money in the long run. Case in point of course: the idiotic situation where people without health insurance go to ERs to get treatment late in the game, instead of being able to afford proper care and insurance. We actually pay more for this idiocy than we would for a well-run national system. Same for investing in clean energy, etc.

One way to reduce the deficit is to reduce, not increase, the deductions for dependents and thereby decrease the incentive to birth them. In addition to direct savings to those taxpayers who don't have children and don't want to subsidize those of others *in addition to footing for public education*, it would reduce education costs, demand-based inflation of resource costs and scarcity, etc. (The whole idea that there's any benefit to increased population is a theocon/moneycon fraud. Each person has to be taken care of as a child to make up for providing capital to elders later, each person cancels out on average as producer/consumer over a lifetime. Having children to support the next generation of retirees is like drinking to cure a hangover. The net true effort cost is still going to be, man hours consumed minus man hours worked.)

But I hate to say, yet it is true that we must be careful about raising tax rates for anyone (except for eliminating loopholes and unfair discrepancies, I mean the base rates) in a recession. Hence, maybe not to 39.6% but more like only 36% etc, but with none of the cuts McCain wants.

tyrannogenius

I did wonder that neither of them were willing to say what every econ 101 class states, that when trying to stimulate an economy, most economists would agree running some deficit is probably necessary.

My understanding is that balancing the budget means paying as we go each year for what we spend and not adding to the deficit (our national debt) each year. Eventually, we would want to pay down on our debt and reduce the deficit while continuing to balance each budget. They are two separate things, but certainly are related. Obama gets it. McCain should, but maybe not. I don't get him...

Looking past McCain's obvious folly, we really are in a world of deep budgetary shit here. Obama is earning himself a nearly impossible task of having to tell the people "we can't".

Speaking of the debate as a whole and who won and looked better (Obama in most reasonable accountings): Real, wide-sample polls show McCain getting the short end at the debate. But it shows what sort frequent Drudge and other online trolling markets, to see McCain ahead in such polls. Go there and do what you can to at least show them something from sensible people.

BTW, fix this damn "Remember personal info?" button please?

Steve he was talking about balancing the budget, not eliminating the deficit. I don't think he can do that either, but it's not the same thing.

Maybe you meant that balancing the budget and eliminating the debt are not the same thing? That would be true, but Steve isn't talking about the debt, he's talking about the deficit, i.e., balancing the budget.

Eliminating the national debt would be a $10+ trillion problem for the next president, not a $1 trillion problem.

"Americans are hurting tonight and they're angry"
Didn't everyone criticize Obama for his "bitter" comments recently?

"The federal deficit is now a half-trillion dollars. Next year, in light of the financial crisis and the government's response, the deficit is likely soar to a $1 trillion."

What fiscal time periods are you using? Using Jan to Jan, I see this years deficit at 1 trillion and next years at 1.5 trillion.

We will pay about 5 percent interest over the life of the recovery, or $125 billion per year in additional interest cost.

McCain was making fun of Obama over taxes, saying the last President to increase taxes during a financial crisis was Hoover.... I think shutting down government would be more akin to the contractionary monetary policy that contributed to the Great Depression.

My friends, I know how to balance a budget by vetoing beers and reforming Freddie Mae!

"Americans are hurting tonight and they're angry and I understand that, and they want a new direction. I can bring them in that direction"

this language demonstrates why mccain fails to resonate with the public.

americans = they

"I can bring them." who is he talking to here? i don't usually think of myself as "they," and i don't ever think of americans as "them."

and palin reinforces that by directly expressing a desire to segregate over 50% of john mccain's "they" as inherently bad and wicked.

nothing demonstrated that better than john "get off my lawn!" mccain's performance last night.

Sure, he can balance the budget. He's talked to Karl (Rove) and got The Math on just how to do it. Sure, my friends, it's all in the math!

(snark off, you may return to reality now)

OT, but here's a good laugh. Bill Schneider (CNN) was just reporting on polls of who won the debate. "Among people who watched the debate", Obama won by a lot. However, he pointed out, if you include people (specifically Republicans) who did not watch it, the results were much closer. And why would that be, Bill?

Steve he was talking about balancing the budget, not eliminating the deficit. I don't think he can do that either, but it's not the same thing.

"balancing the budget" and "eliminating the deficit" are the same thing, both are about balancing the books year by year. "paying off the national debt" is the other concept i think you've got in mind. The latter is clearly impossible within 4 years, as the national debt is more than half of the annual GDP. But i think Steve's point is the the former would be extremely hard & unwise in a weak economy.

Sour and sweet puss

... no reasonable person could possibly think McCain is telling the truth.

My eyes were rolling.
And I had an aggravated look on my face.
I was imploding to stop exploding...

Then I thought:

McCain tap dances like Elmer Fudd, and I couldn't stop laughing...

My understanding is that balancing the budget means paying as we go each year for what we spend and not adding to the deficit (our national debt) each year.

The deficit is not the national debt. The (federal budget) deficit is the amount by which federal expenditures exceed federal revenues, i.e., the amount added to the debt: consequently, "balancing the budget" and "paying as we go each year" are both exactly equivalent to "eliminating the deficit".

clar-z, you came close but a mistaken framing ("not adding to the deficit (our national debt) each year" - no, they aren't the same) means maybe I should explain the basics here for anyone who needs them. They aren't complicated: The deficit for a year is (simplistically at least) the amount spent minus the amount collected. It's like this: Suppose I earned 40k this year. I spent 35k cash but charged 10k to my credit card. My deficit this year is 5k. But suppose I already owed 20k to the CC company from last year. That means my debt went up to 25k.

See that? Debt is cumulative "how much you owe" and deficit is how much *more* debt you ran up this year. So eliminating the deficit means, we break even for current expenses and receipts that year (which break-even can include up and down episodes of incurring debt, and repayment, as long as it nets to zero for the year.) But we won't have paid off the left over indebtedness from earlier budgets. Doing that would be really, really tough and likely inflationary.

Finally, even though I appreciate the normal functionality of debt spending to help the economy, it is dangerous to keep increasing debt when it is already so large to begin with. IOW, deficit spending from a level base has advantages, but not necessarily when you start from a high debt.

If McCain is in the camp of Grover Norquist, he will be able to balance the budget by "starving the beast," the ultra-conservative strategy to weaken the federal government so that it may essentially only spend money on defense. A high deficit, a promise to lower taxes, and a promise to freeze spending fall right in line with this strategy.

paulson could get the gov to buy a trillion's worth of the big shitpile, and then use that to pay off all the deficit. that'd balance the budget, solve the financial crisis, and provide a whole herd of ponies. (this makes sense, if you put government finance under the most creative of business paradigms -- the one the repubs have allowed biz to use for decades -- not the metaphoric one they espouse for gov.)

paulson could get the gov to buy a trillion's worth of the big shitpile, and then use that to pay off all the deficit. that'd balance the budget, solve the financial crisis, and provide a whole herd of ponies. (this makes sense, if you put government finance under the most creative of business paradigms -- the one the repubs have allowed biz to use for decades -- not the metaphoric one they espouse for gov.)

Thank you Neil B. for clearing that up! Not that it makes any difference as I suspect that both dealing with deficit spending and the national debt are not going to get much attention any time soon.

As some have noted above, the thing that struck me the most (aside from the apparent impossibility of the task) is that McCain's response was almost incoherent. Or at least he failed to tie reduced spending with energy independence.

"The federal deficit is now a half-trillion dollars. Next year, in light of the financial crisis and the government's response, the deficit is likely soar to a $1 trillion."

What fiscal time periods are you using? Using Jan to Jan, I see this years deficit at 1 trillion and next years at 1.5 trillion.

There's really only one fiscal time period to use, if you want to calculate an annual federal budget surplus or deficit: the one the Feds use. It begins Oct 1...

Tho'...sorry for the longish remainder to this post

The big takeaway for me is that McCain missed the most important, fundamental issue regarding the whole "balance the budget in 4 years" bullshit: now that we're in what appears to be a severe economic downturn, it would be very, very stupid to attempt to balance the federal budget (and it would be impossible anyway).

In a time of severe economic downturn, you're going to get an "automatic" increase in federal spending because, e.g., there will be higher unemployment compensation claims. At the same time, you have lower federal tax revenues, precisely because the economy is tanking; people who lose jobs don't pay taxes, and neither do companies who go belly up.

In the run-up to the Great Depression, the federal government's bright idea was to cut spending as a way to ward off economic disaster. The feds were badly mistaken...Keynes later demonstrated why. But the upshot is that the removal of the federal spending stimulus at that time helped to make the Great Depression a bit more Great than it might have been otherwise.

So to even suggest that he wants to "balance the budget in 4 years" demonstrates that McCain doesn't have the most basic clue about keeping us out of a Great Depression Two.

CNN's Special Investigations Unit IS currently investigating ACORN and getting the runaround! We'll see IF Bertha Lewis, ACORN's interim chief organizer, keeps her word to open ACORN's books to CNN's investigator Drew Griffin.

"CNN's Special Investigations Unit IS currently investigating ACORN and getting the runaround! We'll see IF Bertha Lewis, ACORN's interim chief organizer, keeps her word to open ACORN's books to CNN's investigator Drew Griffin."

Not likely, given the fact that Nevada and other states have legal proceedings against ACORN. Any Attorney worth their degree would point to the Bush Administrations comments relating to "ongoing investigations", real or imagined.

McCain can't possibly balance the budget. Not if he cuts taxes. Cutting taxes, contrary to the magical, witchdoctor beliefs of Norquist and company, never, ever, ever, ever, ever results in increased revenues to the Treasury. Whenever supply siders gain power, they prove this by setting records for highest deficits. If their magic actually worked, that would never happen. We would have surpluses.

In general, the American economy expands. It's almost always expanding. With few exceptions. An expanding economy will bring in more tax revenue. If tax cuts are in place and higher revenues occur, it's generally the combination of tax cuts and spending increases at work. Those force the government to borrow trillions of dollars, and we get deficit spending. By definition. That additional funny money coursing its way through the economy provides the real stimulus. Not the tax cuts on their own.

If we ever cut SPENDING, dollar for dollar with those tax cuts, there would be no net increase in economic transactions/activity. There would be no additional stimulus to the economy. For obvious reasons. The money sent back into the economy via tax cuts would be negated by the money withheld from the economy through spending cuts. It would be the left hand giveth, while the right hand taketh away. No net gain.

Though it could actually be a net loss. Because targeted government spending can actually have a greater stimulus effect than no-strings-attached tax cuts.

McCain is lying.

John McCain said,

Now, look, Americans are hurting tonight and they're angry and I understand that, and they want a new direction. I can bring them in that direction by eliminating spending.

Really? Freeze spending and "eliminate spending"?

Most of the time we have to say, "well what I'm sure he means is ...", but in the case of John McCain it's hard to do that. What does he mean when he takes both sides of an issue? What does he mean? Nobody knows.

Americans can't understand John McCain. It's likely even John McCain doesn't understand himself.