Last month, when economists, en masse, concluded that John McCain’s idea for a “gas-tax holiday” didn’t make a lick of sense, McCain told a group of voters that economists aren’t to be trusted.
This morning, McCain decided that he actually loves economists.
U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released a statement signed by over 300 professional economists in support of John McCain’s Jobs for America economic plan. The list includes Nobel Prize winners, business economists with experience in the private sector, policy economists with experience in government and academic economists from major universities and state and community colleges.
Considering the fact that McCain’s economic plan is rather ridiculous, I suppose it’s rather impressive that his campaign pulled together over 300 professional economists (I’m going to assume that’s accurate; I didn’t check the credentials of the names) to endorse this nonsense.
But as it turns out, there’s a catch. As Ben Smith reported, “The statement [signed by the economists] leaves out two big chunks of McCain’s economic argument: the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term — there’s literally nothing in the release that mentions the deficit or national debt.”
In other words, the economists didn’t endorse his economic plan; they endorsed his plan after taking out two of the more transparently stupid centerpiece ideas of the plan.
Doesn’t that tell us quite a bit? The McCain campaign couldn’t even get like-minded economist allies to endorse his economic plan without quietly allowing them to ignore two of the proposals McCain claims to take seriously?
For that matter, here’s another question. For the next four months, how many times will the McCain campaign and his media base argue, “This economic plan must be pretty good if it’s been endorsed by over 300 economists”? If anyone’s willing to set an over/under, bet on the over. Trust me.
And as long as we’re talking about the McCain campaign, economics, and demonstrable falsehoods, here’s another doozy from this morning.
The McCain campaign also sent out a memo, reinforcing the point. “This year, Barack Obama returned to the United States Senate twice to vote in favor of a budget resolution which raises income tax rates by three percentage points for the 25, 28 and 33 percent tax brackets,” Holtz-Eakin writes in the memo. “This would mean a tax increase for those earning as little as $32,000. While Barack Obama campaigns on a promise of no tax hikes for anyone but the rich, we once again find that his words are empty when it comes time to act. In both March and June, Barack Obama could have put the force of his vote behind his words. Instead, he decided that ‘rich’ now means those making just $32,000 per year.”
But NBC’s Ken Strickland spoke with a Democratic aide at the Senate Budget Committee who said there was never a budget vote that said: Let’s raise taxes. What the budget vote did do was estimate how much additional revenue would be needed, and then it would go to the Finance Committee to determine how to raise that amount (raise taxes, close loopholes, etc).
As Atrios noted, “[T]his was a vote to basically have the committee score the various possibilities.”
The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania isn’t always the most reliable source for fact-checking, but it got this one right when the McCain gang started using the line last last: “[B]y repeating their inflated 94-vote figure, the McCain campaign and the GOP falsely imply that Obama has pushed indiscriminately to raise taxes for nearly everybody. A closer look reveals that he’s voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers. That’s consistent with what he’s said he’d do as president, which is to raise taxes only on those making more than $250,000 a year.”
It’s just another deliberate deception for the list. (I assume there’s a “list.” If not, maybe we should start one….)