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Originally Posted by badnarik
The paragraph that explicitly says "While there’s some guesswork about how their policy pronouncements would play out"
That and the economics lesson about the gas tax pandering.
McCain is admittedly clueless about economics, but probably not much more clueless than the other candidates.
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You mean this?
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While there’s some guesswork about how their policy pronouncements would play out, the TPC has calculated that under a scenario like the one the Democratic contenders have suggested, Americans would pay $1.1 trillion more in income and estate taxes over 10 years than they would if all 2001-2006 tax cuts were extended and the estate tax was repealed permanently.
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Well, that isn't factcheck.org's guesswork. The guesswork is the Tax Policy Center's, an unrelated think tank. Most projections like this do involve some guesswork. But really--so what? Are you saying the number is more like 900 billion? 1.5 trillion? I think the lesson here is that the Bush tax cuts cost the government a lot of money--and given their impending fiscal crisis that's pretty significant. Besides, the same article cites numbers from The Internal Revenue Service, the Brookings Institution, the Office of Tax Analysis, and the Congressional Budget Office. So I think they have their bases covered.
As for the economics lesson, I think it's pretty sound. The "gas tax holiday" is a pander, pure and simple. Even if it did influence prices at the pump, it would still be a pander--the fact that it won't makes it even worse. Factcheck.org doesn't do original research--they sum up and analyze research done by other policy institutes, and they're usually pretty careful. It's one of the more reputable sources on the web.
And I do agree that many politicians are clueless when it comes to economics--but I happen to think McCain is more clueless. At a certain point it's just a matter of opinion, though.