We've all heard allegations by the candidates that one or the other would or wouldn't increase or decrease taxes and/or significantly increase federal government spending and worsen the already ballooning federal deficit. In fact, a current McCain ad is entitled Painful Tax Increases and describes how Barack Obama would increase the taxes on American families.

Here's what FactCheck.org, probably the most respected and non-partisan fact-checking service has to say on what the plans of both candidates are likely to produce:

Tax Reductions

The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, has produced one of the most authoritative analyses of the two candidates’ tax plans. When we asked if Obama’s claim that he would “cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families” was true, the spokesman for TPC told FactCheck.org that it was “consistent with our estimates.” Overall, the TPC found that Obama’s plan would produce a tax cut for 81.3 percent of all households, and a cut for 95.5 percent of all households with children. Under Obama's plan, the TPC estimates that people (or couples) making between $37,595 and $66,354 a year would see an average savings of $1,118 on their taxes. The average household income in the U.S. was a little more than $51,000 in 2007.

Under McCain's plan, on the other hand, those same individuals would save $325 on average — $793 less than the average savings under Obama's plan.

Increased Government Spending

The recent McCain TV ad also claims that Obama and congressional Democrats would bring about "years of deficits." The TPC analysis shows that both candidates' economic plans would fail to bring an end to deficit spending. In fact, by that measure McCain's plans are worse than Obama's. According to the TPC analysis, Obama's tax plan would increase the debt by $3.5 trillion by 2018, an increase of about 35%. McCain's plan would bring about a projected 50% increase in the national debt by 50%, a $5 trillion increase in the same time frame.

The TPC also found that neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases. Neither the McCain or Obama campaigns have specified any such spending cuts or tax increases.

In response to Senator McCain's statement that he would balance the federal budget by 2013, Robert L. Bixby of the Concord Coalition, another non-partisan group which concentrates on fiscal issues, said, "It’s feasible to balance the budget by 2013, but very unlikely under the policies Senator McCain has proposed. His proposed spending cuts are far too vague to be counted on for significant savings and, even if they were more specific, I can’t see how they would come close to offsetting the level of tax cuts he recommends.

The Washington Post's editorial board also differed with McCain's claims regarding his tax and spending plans. The board concluded, in its July 14 editorial, that the McCain plan was "not credible."


I'm disappointed that neither candidate for the presidency seems to think that the massive national debt that has been created within the past decade is an important enough problem to seriously address. It's one of the most important issues as far as I'm concerned, but clearly would require the announcement of some very unpopular plans by the candidates. It looks like neither is choosing to accept the political risk associated with telling the truth about how we can or will reduce the national debt. Like our own household budgets it can only be done in one of two ways--increase revenues or decrease spending.

Comments anyone?