McCain Economy Would've Been No Different - UPDATED

If things had turned out differently on a November night in 2008 and we had the pleasure of a McCain/Palin administration, the record deficit would have been the same or perhaps worse. So says John McCain's former economic policy advisor.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin argued that under McCain's stewardship economic policy would have been strikingly different than under Obama -- with a much smaller stimulus bill and government expenditures going down as opposed to up.

But the former Congressional Budget Office director did acknowledge that, even with these changes, the country "probably would still have a record deficit" as is projected under the Obama administration.

And we all know why.

...many of the deficit problems the current administration faces today are traced directly back to the policies of its predecessors. This, indeed, seems to be implicit in Holtz-Eakin's acknowledgment.

In December 2009, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that the then-$1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government under Obama had much to do with the Bush administration's package of tax cuts, the wars it launched in Iraq and Afghanistan and its response to the recession.

I wonder if McCain would have "blamed it on Bush"?


UPDATE (4:15pm): Of course, no sooner does President Obama release his budget than The Maverick gets busy twiddling his thumbs to come up with this asinine tweet:



Maybe he should have spoken to Holtz-Eakin...